DOCSTOC, the free document sharing service, has rolled out a new branded embeddable document viewer that can help to improve the usability of PDF-laden investor relations websites.

While several other document sharing services let companies convert their PDF and Office-format reports into more engaging online documents, Docstoc is the first to let all users customize the look and feel of the Flash-based embeddable viewer, according to Techcrunch.

Considering that investor relations vendors are billing companies thousands of dollars to convert PDF reports into Flash and image-based documents that have fewer features and lower usability than Docstoc’s free viewer, I think Docstoc is an obvious option for IR departments.

To show you what the branded Docstoc viewer can look like, I created one for IR Web Report in about 1 minute. I am using it below for an embeddable version of UBS AG’s 2009 Annual Review, which the company posted on its investor relations website today in PDF only.

UBS Review 2009

From a compliance perspective, Docstoc’s format can help companies meet the Securities and Exchange Commissions usability requirements for annual reports and proxy statements.

Importantly, Docstoc’s documents are searchable and analysts and investors can copy text from the documents for reuse in their own reports. Flash and image-based document conversion packages from vendors like Broadridge, Computershare, Thomson Reuters, Shareholder.com and many others, do not support easy text extraction.

And since the Docstoc viewer can be embedded on any website, financial blogger/analysts can grab complete company branded reports to use as collateral for their articles, much as I have done above with UBS’s 2009 review. The ready availability of embeds for company information may help to attract more coverage by online finance writers and bloggers.

Like other document sharing services, including Scribd, issuu, and SlideShare, converting PDFs and Office documents in Docstoc is extremely easy. At the simplest level, you open an account and upload your documents from your computer. The conversions typically are ready for embedding in a few minutes.

It is important, however, to understand how embeddable documents interact with search engines and the impact this can have on your websites traffic and visibility. Document sharing services also offer advanced features that you should consider using.

To learn more, visit Docstocs website.

A GROWING number of U.S. companies are holding their annual shareholder meetings exclusively online in spite of shareholder concerns that virtual-only meetings may undermine board accountability and exacerbate plunging retail voting rates.

Although they are uncommon, online-only annual meetings are not new. As Broc Romanek at TheCorporateCounsel.net points out, it was nine years ago that Inforte became the first U.S. company to conduct its annual meeting solely online.

Since then, a handful of other companies have opted to hold their meeting proceedings online only, including Herman Miller, Inc. (NASDAQ:MLHR), ICU Medical, Incorporated (NASDAQ:ICUI), Adaptec, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADPT) and CIBER, Inc. (NYSE:CBR).

In 2009, Intel became the first company to enable live online voting at its annual meeting.

However, it wasnt until last year that shareholders were able to cast their votes and pose questions online during live meetings. Prior to that shareowners had to lodge their votes in advance of the meeting date. When Inforte did its online-only meeting in 2001, 97% of the shares were voted by fax before the meeting started.

Real-time voting offered by Broadridge and Wells Fargo

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) became the first U.S. company to enable live shareowner voting online during its 2009 hybrid online and physical meeting. The semiconductor giant used a platform developed by Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. (NYSE:BR) to validate shareowners and record their live votes.

Since then Broadridge itself and several smaller companies, including Warner Music Group Corp. (NYSE:WMG), and technology company Conexant Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNXT), have used the Broadridge platform to hold virtual-only meetings.

And in the coming weeks several more companies are slated to replace their physical meetings with web-only ones. Medical technology company Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN), asset management company Artio Global Investors Inc. (NYSE:ART), electronic manufacturer Winland Electronics, Inc. (AMEX:WEX), and holding company PICO Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PICO) all plan to go virtual-only this year.

Meanwhile, several other companies will be holding hybrid online and offline meetings with live Internet voting. They include electronics retailer Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY), utility American Water Works Co., Inc. (NYSE:AWK), and investment firm The Charles Schwab Corporation (NYSE:SCHW).

Interestingly, Schwab is the only company Ive seen that is not using Broadridge for its live voting. The company is using a system developed by the stock transfer division of Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC), which requires shareholders who hold their stock in Street Name to obtain a legal proxy from their broker and then fax or email it to the transfer agent (not the friendliest method, for sure).

Charles Schwab Corp. is using Wells Fargo for its 2010 virtual meeting.

Enough to lure retail investors back, or bigger drop coming?

The emergence of virtual annual meetings comes at a time when many U.S. companies have seen a sharp drop in retail shareowner voting rates, largely due to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decision to allow companies to publish their annual meeting materials on the web instead of mailing printed copies to all shareholders.

The Notice & Access process (see prior articles), approved by the SEC in 2007, has resulted in a greater than 75% drop in voting by retail shareholders at meetings where it has been used. While many observers have argued that the change in the default delivery method has caused confusion among shareholders, my view is that retail investors dont go online to participate because the experience is tedious and insipid.

Some observers believe virtual annual meetings could help to engage more retail investors in the annual meeting process. Getting out the retail vote has become a major concern this year after the SEC approved a New York Stock Exchange rule barring brokerages from casting uninstructed client votes in director elections.

However, based on what Ive seen and experienced firsthand at virtual-only annual meetings, Im thoroughly unconvinced that live voting will make a meaningful difference beyond some initial interest in the novelty. Broadridge and the transfer agents have a poor track record of providing good online user experiences. And until directors and executives are willing to interact online with shareholders before, during and after the meetings, investors really dont have an incentive to get involved.

Indeed, there is a reasonable risk that virtual-only meetings could lead to fewer retail votes being cast. This is because shareowners who otherwise would vote in advance of the meeting date might now wait for the live meeting and then miss the opportunity to vote for any number of reasons, such as not being able to connect to the meeting during work hours, which typically is when meetings are held.

Its noteworthy that most of the companies opting for online-only meetings thus far have been fairly closely held by insiders and a handful of big institutional investors, who typically always vote their shares. There are few potential downsides to these companies if retail investors fail to vote.

A demo screen of Broadridge's virtual shareholder meeting interface.

Concerns raised over accountability

There is also a potential reputation risk to boards and executives if shareholders perceive that a company is moving to a virtual-only meeting to avoid being confronted by shareowners on important governance issues.

As reported by James McRitchie on CorpGov.net, Intel Corp. decided to cancel plans to hold a virtual-only annual meeting this year after shareholders filed a proposal urging a continuation of physical stockholder meetings. The proponents worry that eliminating the physical meeting will lead to a lack of accountability of the Board and top management if there is no physical meeting with in-person interaction. The company will now hold a hybrid online and physical meeting May 11.

The United States Proxy Exchange (USPX), a non-government organization that champions shareowner rights, plans to hold a conference later this year to discuss issues around virtual meetings.

In a news release following Intels decision, USPX said that while it believes virtual meetings can improve shareholder participation, it is concerned that the technology could hinder shareowners from exercising their rights and reduce meaningful interaction with directors, executives and other shareowners.

Bottom line

The debate around virtual-only meetings is only just getting started. Most of the companies moving to them are doing so because they dont see value in having a shareowner meeting at all if only a few people show up. Theyre out to do the bare minimum they can get away with. A few forward-thinking IROs and corporate secretaries, however, see virtual meetings as a way to involve more people in the governance process. Ultimately, though, its not the technology that will change things, but the willingness of directors and senior executives to get involved and muck it up with the unwashed shareholder masses.

There is good news for webmasters and bloggers who use Google webmaster tool to keep track of top search terms for their websites and blogs. Now they have access to more statistics around top search queries for their website with charts. For all top search terms, impressions, clickthrough and % clickthrough statistics are available.

What these terms used here for:

Impressions total number of impressions for that keyword during the selected period for your website

Clickthrough gives the total number of clicks on your website for that keyword in a selected period of time

% Clickthrough gives the total percentage of clicks that your website gets out of total impressions. Suppose for make money online keyword, my website gets 5,400 impressions in the last one month and get 140 clicks, so my blog clickthrough rate for make money online keyword is 3 percent (approx).

For each keyword, we will have impressions, clickthrough and clickthrough rate as per our website positions on Google with respective URLs. This data is really useful to make estimates about the kind of traffic we can get for a keyword according to our website position in search engine results. From these statistics, I came to a conclusion, most of the time; 70-80 percent of traffic for a keyword is controlled by top 3 listing in the absence of paid results.

So if your website is placed on 9 or 10 position for a keyword and getting 5-10 clicks per day only, this count can increase 10s of time or even more if you are able to bring your website in top 3 listings.

Before this update from Google, we have access to top 100 search queries only. But now we have access to 1000s of search queries.

Related posts:

1. Google webmaster tool benefits for webmasters
2. Ultimate Keyword Research Ranking tool from KeyRow
3. Google adwords Keywords suggestion Tool

A SURVEY has found that financial websites and blogs are the top influences on U.S. individual investors, while those under age 40 are more heavily influenced by family, friends and work colleagues than are older investors.

The findings reinforce the importance of the web in shaping investors investment decisions and highlight the potential for information shared between friends on social networks to become strategically important to investor relations professionals. Meanwhile, the influence of financial advisors is waning.

Conducted online from January 7 to 19, 2010 by Harris Interactive, the study surveyed 1,021 general investors between the ages of 21 and 65, and 912 ING Direct ShareBuilder customers within the same age groups.

Web and social networks key influences

The study found that younger investors, defined as those aged 21 to 39, differ from their older counterparts in that they are far more likely to rely on family (40% v. 19%), friends (27% v. 14%) and work colleagues (17% v. 6%).

Given that many investors today rely on online social networks like Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family, the potential of recommendations via social networks to influence investor actions appears to be growing.

The study also found that financial websites and blogs were the most influential external influences for both younger investors (49%) and those age 40 and older (47%). Financial print publications ranked second with both groups.

Increased self-reliance and dwindling influence of financial professionals

Meanwhile, younger investors are much less likely to rely on advice from financial professionals than their older counterparts.

Only 35% of younger investors said they were currently using a financial planner compared to 39% of older investors. When it came using brokers, however, only 18% of younger investors said they use them compared to 36% of those over 40.

The studys authors say the losses they incurred in 2008/2009 and the questionable practices of some financial institutions have caused investors to re-evaluate their reliance on financial advisors and brokers for investing advice.

Fully 45% of U.S. investors say they have reduced or stopped using financial professionals for investing advice. Older investors are leading this trend, says the study, with almost half (49%) of those over 40 having cut or halted their reliance compared to 37% of younger investors

A whitepaper on the study is embedded below

Harris ShareBuilder Study of Individual Investors

I was trying to contact Alan Leiw today, the owner of moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com blog, regarding some guest blogging issues. Then I think of browsing his blog, just after sending an email to him. But what I see, his blog is no more, its gone, and looks like Google deleted it. Dont know why Google is doing this with such a popular blog in money making niche. This blog used to enjoy top rankings on Google for most of highly searched keywords related to money making niche like make money, making money, make money online, earn money online etc. It was a PR 5 blog having Alexa ranking of 25,306.

Here is a screenshot of this blog showing in Google cache few hours back today (21 Apr 2010) even:

And here is another screenshot of makemoneyinfo blog showing “The blog you were looking for was not found” today:

Google is still showing sitelinks for this domain when I type in moneymakerinfo on google.com. So I’m unable to understand the reason behind deletion of this blog on whom Google shows lots of trust and authority for years. Here is a screenshot showing sitelinks shown by Google for this money making blog by Alan Leiw

Even I send an email to Alan about this hinting him about the situation. But I haven’t got any reply from him on it. Due to all these reasons, I always recommend using your own domain, instead of creating a free blog on Blogger. Otherwise, you have to pay the cost as Alan is paying by losing his blog for no reason. So all of his efforts that he invested for years in creating this blog and all of his earnings coming from this blog are gone.

For me it will be a big loss if Google does not restore this blog. In that case, I will be losing lots of valuable links and traffic coming from this blog. I had blogroll links exchange with Alan blog and had so far get 7-8 of my guest post published on this make money online blog.

What you have so say on it? Frankly speaking, I learnt a lot about making money and blogging related topics from this blog and this blog was covering highest amount of content related to money making niche. So I’m really sad after see what happens with this amazing make money blog. Have you ever been to this blog and how was your impression about this blog and how are you feeling after seeing this Blog not found?

Update

Alan Leiw confirmed Blogger Team deleted his moneymakerinfo blog created on Blogger (Owned by Google) on 21st April 2010

Good News

Good news is that MoneyMakerInfo blog is back on 28th April, 2010. So I’m really happy after seeing this huge money making blog being restored by Google. I sent an email to Alan asking:

Great to see you back. How you are able to get your blog back?

Here is how Alan replied to me:

I contacted the Blogger team and re-enable my Blogger account and then I send a request to them to review my blog and restore. They somehow restore my blog.

Related posts:

1. How to make money online with Blogger (Google) blog
2. How to make money online with Google Adsense Publisher program
3. How to use Google Trends to make money online