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Traditionally social media rivals, Facebook, Myspace and Twitter have grouped together to create a new tool, aimed at drawing users’ attention to the “biased” results provided as part of Google’s Search Plus Your World, according to an article published by the Telegraph.
Entitled “Don’t be evil” (a nod to one of the search engine giant’s early mottos), the browser add-on is currently only compatible with Firefox.
The tool has been created to prevent Google searches returning content that’s been ‘ranked up’ by Google from its own social network, Google+.
A recent change has seen Google searches return Google+ content at the top of search results – a change previously announced as part of Search Plus Your World – at the expense of results from Twitter and Facebook.
Google has explained how the new update – which could affect SEO – worked.
A post published by Google read: “Starting today, if you search for a topic like (music) or (baseball), you might see prominent people who frequently discuss this topic on Google+ appearing on the right-hand side of the results page.”
The search engine giant has yet to respond to the launch of ‘Don’t be evil’ – which is currently only available in America. However, Google did previously say it had tried to strike a deal with both Twitter and Facebook to include their results in a prominent position – but wrangles over cost and privacy scuppered such a move.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a provider of SEO Services & Pay Per Click strategies.
Google is said to be in the midst of testing another new layout for its SERPs. According to an article published by Search Engine Watch, the appearance of this fresh design has been reported by a number of people.
One of the main changes has seen the removal of icons in Google’s side bar (Images, Videos, News, Shopping etc.), which were originally launched in 2010.
The number of suggested searches provided by Google Instant has also been limited, with just four being displayed – fitting perfectly in a newly-added area of white space below the search box (the space previously occupied by the word ‘Search’ – displayed in red – and the number of results and search process time).
As a result of the test, the space for ads to be displayed (in the cream area at the top of the SERP) has also significantly increased.
If this new design is to be implemented, the change could have an effect on SEO and PPC services.
In the article, Danny Goodwin writes: “This could have a rather large impact on SEO and PPC click-through rates.
“On searches with a large number of AdWords ads, organic results could be pushed completely off the screens of some searchers, allowing the PPC ads to completely dominate.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
With every industry there are myths; the world of SEO is absolutely no different.
According to an article published by Search Engine Journal there are a number of ‘nefarious SEO fables’ that are still circulating and providing people with misconceptions.
Here is just a small selection of those produced in the article:
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Are you offering facts and figures which people regularly search on? Does it drive traffic to your site?
Let’s give an example: what is the height of St Paul’s cathedral?
As you can see, the information the searcher requires is (partially) in the search engine listing. However, the likelihood is that this is enough to pique the interest of the searcher, who will then click on the site to find out more information.
However, Google announced Google Squared during the summer of last year, possibly in response to Wolfram Alpha, which is a knowledge engine rather than a pure search engine.
Now, using Google Squared, results in the SERPs are likely to generate very different results for search terms if Google Squared assumes it is a research term. The potential is that the entire answer to the search is held within the SERPs.
In plain English, this means that a searcher may well find their answer on Google, in the SERPs, and will not actually visit your website at all.
It has long been known that users search the internet in different ways eg to shop, to research or to socialise, and this latest addition to Google searches is an indication of the recognition of those differences.
Go play! All of a sudden, the SEO industry cannot refer to a particular set of results to show off its prowess or portfolio, because as personalisation and search intelligence kicks in, you are likely to see very different results than your neighbour, even with similar keywords.
There is a problem here though. If Google endeavours to feed all the information to searchers, without any requirement to visit your site at all, where does that leave your carefully crafted website? Or your PPC campaign if the answers are within the organic results provided by Google?
The fun has begun!
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A recent interview with Josh Cohen, who is Senior Product Manager of Google News, shows how user behaviour can affect ranking in Google News.
This approach is also used by TrustRank, as part of its complex formulae, and it is inevitable that more and more user behaviour traits are likely to be included in ranking algorithms in future.
For instance, each user conducting a search is (hopefully!) a human being. Therefore, a user can easily spot from certain clues when a link is inappropriate for their needs. This may be because it is an example of spam (it is big business getting spammy results to the top of the SERPs), or because it is from a publication which the user does not trust or value. It may be that it is irrelevant to their search – common where there are different meanings for terms eg in specialised industry sectors, different cultures and so on.
Conversely, users may always click on articles from certain publications, or with a certain type of headline, and so on. Google News is aggregating this user behaviour data over time to ensure the news service delivers what searchers are seeking.
Watch out for more and more user behaviour criteria in all SEO. Build your brand so that users learn to recognise and associate it with quality content. Build your content so that users return over and over again for your opinion. Learn from your own traffic stats. Analyse the popular pages on your site, run multi-variate testing to see what works best for your audience. Listen to your users – surveys, feedback, polls.
People are fickle – they may not always do what you want or expect, but it is important to remember – the customer (read: website visitor) is always right!
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E-consultancy have recently published a very interesting article citing Google Chief Economist Hal Varian stating that research shows that position is not related to conversion rates.
So, whilst you may have staff dedicated to maintaining your position in the PPC SERPs, it could well be shown from this research that they would be better utilised if they focused on other internet marketing strategies.
Sure, being in the top 10, above your competitors, seems to bring in more clicks, but importantly, it does not seem to bring in more conversions. In other words, the position is not related to attracting quality, targeted traffic who will then complete the call for action, be that a purchase, download, sign up etc.
Whilst being in the top 10 rankings, or nowadays the top 20, is still of key importance, where you figure within those top adverts seems to be irrelevant to produce the results you require.
I can see a few PPC agencies laying off staff…….
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More than likely not, but there is no time like the present to look at the possible issues around this question.
There have been numerous discussions recently about the UK serps (search engine results pages) showing too many non-UK sites above established UK content. Is it a bug in the algorithm, some sort of global testing to open commercial doors for non-UK companies or is it just SNAFU?! We’ll discuss this issue next post.
On top of that, comes a re-opening of the discussions which started in 2006-7 when many in the internet marketing world were amongst the early adopters who started to use social media for personal engagement first, and then for marketing. With that use came the realisation that here was huge potential for less searches to be made on search engines because answers could be found more quickly from your peers and community.
The threat to Google et al search revenues was quite clear, as well as to SEO companies who needed to develop social media marketing strategies quickly, and the effects have become more apparent as Twitter, Facebook, community media tools and social networking have taken off.
However, the last few weeks have seen an escalation of the Google backlash, negative PR, and questionning which has been ongoing for some time because of the ubergoogle factor, but it is wider than that – it is beginning to affect the perception of the whole industry. This article seems to be the most telling of many recommending that the time has come to regulate the search landscape.
Bearing in mind the phenomenal growth of tools such as Twitter, and the fact that for many it is now far faster to find an answer to a simple problem, to conduct research, to run a survey, to go viral and so on through tools such as Twitter than through standard internet marketing and seo, it was inevitable that the search engines would start to lose favour for certain ‘real-time’ needs.
As the threats of social media have become apparent to the Googles of this world, it would seem that efforts have been made to either eliminate the threat from the likes of social bookmarking tools and blogs (as in the great October 2007 Pagerank loss for major blogs), incorporate social media tools within Google’s own apps (eg the new features in Google Reader) or to remove certain results from the algorithm entirely, whether that is manually or automatically.
The blogosphere and Twitter are both full of many, many theories, commentaries and opinions on just what is going on and what should be done about it.
If Google finds its revenues under threat – we know Google has been slow to adapt to the fast-paced development of social media – then those in the internet marketing industry need to be aware of the potential changes that Google may make to resist that ‘attack’. And hence how others will see the impact those changes have when such a massive proportion of the search engine acreage is owned by a single company, and the efforts that are then proposed to regulate that control of search habits and results.
There may be difficult times ahead for those who have put all their eggs in the Google basket.
Now really is the time to look out of the box. If the dominance that Google (once everyone’s darling and the word on everyone’s lips meaning “to search the web”) has coveted for so long is seen as a threat to world trade (particularly in times of global recession), or to the independence and freedom web surfers should enjoy, and hence efforts are made to reduce that dominance, the impact to all in the SEO, SEM and IM trade could be awesome. And not in a good way for those who have been slow to see this cloud on the horizon.
Whether you are reliant on gmail for your email, google apps and docs for all your in-house documents (a problem Twitter has recently faced when hacked) or your core business relies on serps, you should start researching and considering the potential for you.
Discuss!
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Got a few minutes spare? You should make time for this tip…. it will really make a difference to your search engine exposure on Google and how visitors view you with regard to the competition.
Firstly, log in to the Google Local Business Centre and watch the short video (1min 38s) explaining the benefits of adding your business. Then, add your business. Have to hand a photo or three, as well as a video if you can.
For any business with a lack of time and budget to get right behind internet marketing, the LBC offers a chance to get information about where your customers are coming from, your site stats, and enhance your web presence through your SERP listing.
The other great thing you can now do is to add coupons to your site that your potential customers can print out and bring along to your bricks and mortar store. If you are going to do this (it may not suit your business model), then don’t forget to promote the coupons in plenty of other places too.
Integrate on and offline marketing for maximum effect.
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Why spend hours going through the Google rankings looking for your position, or that of your competitors, when you can automate the process and receive the results by email?
RankReport is a great free tool that will let you monitor your rankings weekly or daily if you are obsessed by the SERPs, and will then email the results. Saves you a job!
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