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SES London: Google Talks Bounce Rate, Social Signals You Should Be Measuring

21 Feb

Search Engine Strategies London is going on right now, and Googler Avinash Kaushik gave a keynote address that appears to have left attendees inspired.

State of Search’s Louis Venter has an extensive account of Kaushik’s speech. One interesting part is what he says about bounce rate. I’m not sure if these were Kaushik’s exact words, but Venter writes, “Bounce rate shows you how much you suck.”

One issue that’s been debated in the industry is how much of a signal bounce rate is in Google’s algorithm. If this is the message Kaushik is sending, however, it stands to reason that this is the message Google is sending. He is, after all, the digital marketing evangelist for the company, and the analytics guru.

Another highlight was the following list of “things you should measure for social contribution” as Venter conveys:

1) Conversation rate – if you talk does anyone care? The number of audience comments per social contribution will help measure this.

2) Amplification rate – 70, 000 people follow Avinash, his second level of people is over 1 million people. # forwards per social contribution is a key metric to cover too.

3) Applause Rate – # positive clicks per social contribution

4) Economic Value – sum of your macro and micro conversions and how they contribute to your overall picture

Here’s some Twitter reaction to the event so far:

@louisventer
Louis VenterAvinash was awesome, here is the post i wrote on it http://t.co/UKHi4lcq # seslondon 10 hours ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@rod_izumi
Hiroto IzumiGreat Opening Keynote of #seslondon 2012 by @avinash ! Hope to see you again soon again in Japan. http://t.co/bYQO6Vcs 5 hours ago via HootSuite ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@wellertimothy
Tim wellerHITS . How Idiots Track Success. Great quote from Avinash Kaushik at #seslondon 11 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@adCenter
Microsoft adCenterSome pictures of day 1 #seslondon http://t.co/bWyVFUNN @sesconf – more people in the pictures tomorrow! 4 hours ago via CoTweet ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@louisventer
Louis Venteris re-targeting right for you? great session at #seslondon http://t.co/MbvOE44K 5 hours ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@leeodden
Lee OddenThx! RT @willquick: I pray to God that @LeeOdden is putting those slides online. Amazing information. #seslondon 5 hours ago via Echofon ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@AndrewGirdwood
Andrew GirdwoodA ranking in position 3 or 4 with review stars can generate as much traffic as number 1 position, says @guylevine #seslondon 5 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@patrickaltoft
Patrick AltoftKey Linkbuilding Strategies Presentation from SES London #seslondon http://t.co/wNS0KPt7 via @patrickaltoft 6 hours ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@avinash
Avinash Kaushik@matt_mcgowan Thanks Matt, it was great to open the conference. Great audience, great Incisive staff! #seslondon 7 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@leeodden
Lee OddenSEO Migration Plan: A Failure to Plan is a Plan to Fail @SESLondon http://t.co/TAcosYVY 1 day ago via bitly ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@anthonybpalmer
Anthony B PalmerPPC Tools of the Trade #seslondon http://t.co/p2umTS96 1 hour ago via twitterfeed ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@paoloalbera
Paolo Albera53 Best Tips from #SESLondon Day 1: http://t.co/2xnLf3l2 by @kevgibbo (via @seoptimise) 14 minutes ago via Tweetbot for iOS ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@JonDMyers
Jon Myers#SESLondon Day1, 3 Panels moderated, @guylevine @daxhamman @andymihalop @refinedlabs @monetate Karl Blanks @alistairdent top speakers! 58 minutes ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@Ideasfordad
dan patmorePleased with how my #seslondon presenting is shaping up now :-) 1 hour ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@kevgibbo
Kevin Gibbonsaudit & benchmark, preserve URLs, update backlinks/301, submit new sitemap & work w/ SEO agency from day 1 @russosullivan #seslondon 5 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

Attending the event? What has been the best part to you?


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52% of US Mobile Search Clicks Lead to Calls

20 Feb

A report by local-mobile ad network xAd has shown some very promising numbers for the mobile search and ad market. The US based Q4-2011 data has been collected from mobile sites and apps that run the ads of xAd as well as the related user behavior taken into account.

Here is the part of the report that has got everyone excited, xAd reported high performance for the ads it served, including click-through rates of seven percent for search and .6 percent for display. Breaking it down even further, 37 percent of mobile-local searchers and five percent of mobile-display users took secondary actions, which are post-click activities such as calling businesses and accessing driving directions.

The report has revealed that the Americans searched for restaurants the most, followed by gas stations. Bars and clubs make the rear of the search preferences graph in Q4:

52% of US Mobile Search Clicks Lead to Calls - Q4-2011 Report

The report has also revealed that ad performance for both search and display has gone up with better CTRs. With the average CTRs for local search ads were 7 percent, and for display ads the number was 0.6 CTRs. The interesting part here is that after the click, users went on to take desired actions like calling up the business or looking it up on the map. So, 37% of search results clicked as well as 5% of the ads clicked got calls and visits.

52% of US Mobile Search Clicks Lead to Calls - Q4-2011 Report

The report has further revealed that 52% of the people called up a business, making the call as the most frequent secondary action taken. In the case of display ads clicks, users looked up maps the most- the figure being 50%.The report also revealed that display ad clickers wanted to see reviews and more information. Whereas, the search ads clickers, either called or looked for directions to the business.

52% of US Mobile Search Clicks Lead to Calls - Q4-2011 Report

Americans searching for local stuff during the day chose to click on search results. While they clicked on display ads at night, while they were in a relaxed state and willing to explore more.

52% of US Mobile Search Clicks Lead to Calls - Q4-2011 Report

The report made a comparison between smartphones, iOS users and Android users and has come out with results that mobile subscribers use mobile browsers as the primary access method for local-search information. But iPhone and Android owners prefer in-app access more.

52% of US Mobile Search Clicks Lead to Calls - Q4-2011 Report

The numbers from this report are quite promising. What marketers need to work on is to create a comprehensive strategy for both locally targeted search and display to maximize their business exposure.

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Bing Extends Lead Over Yahoo! Even Further

17 Feb

The January search rankings are out and Bing should be pretty happy. In Dec 2011 When Bing claimed the number 2 spot in December 2011, many speculated that it wouldnt last. However, the January 2012 statistics have rolled around and guess what?

It has retained the number 2 position with its market share at over 15.1% now, while Yahoo remains in 3rd position with 14.5% market share.

The January 2012 search market share results can be summed up as :

  • Unsurprisingly, Google bags the first place with 66.2% share (up 0.3% points from previous month)

  • Bing retains second position with 15.2% (up 0.1% points from December 2011)

  • Yahoo stills sits in third place at 14.1 percent (down buy 0.4% from previous month)

  • Ask now claims 3 percent of the market (up by 0.1 point)

  • AOL remained unchanged at 1.6 percent

ComScore says that 17.8 billion explicit core searches were conducted in January in the US; Google Sites dominated with 11.8 billion. Microsoft Sites with 2.7 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.5 billion, Ask Network with 527 million and AOL, Inc. with 277 million.

Americans performed nearly 20 billion total core search queries; Google Sites got 13.2 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.2 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.8 billion. The graph below shows the percentage values for each search engine.

Total-Core-Search-January-2012

In January, 68.4% of organic search results were powered by Google (vs. 68.1 % in December) while 26.5 % of searches came from Bing (no change from December).

comScore-Jan-2012-Explicit-Core-Search

Googles share hasnt been this high since December 2010, when Google commanded 66.2% of the search market, according to comScore.

January shows that Google, despite all the angst and concern amongst search insiders (remember Search Plus Your World?), is holding steady with two-thirds of US searchers using Google as their search engine of choic
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Wikipedia Appears on First Page For Almost All Google Searches

16 Feb

For many Google and Wikipedia are two most widely visited websites. Infact, Google is the reason why most of us visit Wikipedia. Google, co-founder, Sergey Brin believes that Wikipedia one of the greatest triumphs of the Internet and an invaluable resource to anyone who is online.

It is not a hidden fact anymore that Google loves Wikipedia, whatever your Google search query is. There are 99% chances that, if Wikipedia has an article based on query, it will be shown on the first page.

Wikipedia Appears on First Page For Almost All Google Searches

Study shows that for 56% search queries Wikipedia is the top listed result on Google search result page. Further more it says, Wikipedia ranks between 1 and 5 for almost 96% of the searches. Astonishingly, there were only 8 out of total 1,000 nouns, for which Wikipedia did not appear on the first page. Those being mail, news, trainers, national, sweets, wardrobe, phone and flight.

Reactions to this study have been mixed. Though it comes as a good news for many, there are some who are not taking it nicely. Especially if they believe poorly written content on Wikipedia outranks quality websites offering same information. Wikipedia taking a first page position could mean one less place in the top ten for possible PPC paying corporations for some, while for others it means less searching.

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5 Things You Need to Know About Google Search

13 Feb

Some of you follow the news every day, watching Google like a hawk every time it makes a move. This post is not for you. This post is for everyone else that has vaguely noticed that Google has made lots of changes over the last couple of years, but they arent sure about what all of them mean for search marketers. As someone who has been in search marketing and search technology before that for almost 30 years, I have to say that the changes that Google has made in the last couple of years have been mind-boggling.

I did a speech for the Marketing Executives Networking Group on Friday to go over this very subject: The 5 Things You Need to Know about the New Google Search.

You can look over the whole set of slides, but here are the five things that I highlighted:

  • Google indexes content faster than ever.
  • Google shows search results as searchers type.

  • Google ranks search results based on social activity.

  • Google ranks search results based on human ratings of Web page quality.

  • Google ranks results based on who your friends are.

All of these changes have come in just the last two years and add up to some massive changes in the way search marketing works. Where you once could conduct link campaigns (or even break the rules by buying links), that doesnt work very well anymore, because if the human raters and the your sites social activity dont validate the link analysis, your site drops in rankings. If you were living off old pages and had ignored social, you might not even find your content showing up. If had good rankings for top keywords but not for the five-word long-tail keywords, you might be suffering, too.

What has brought on this frenzy of activity from Google? I think they have been running scared from Bing since 2009. Bing made massive gains in 2010″to the point that a few pundits were actually predicting that the trend showed that Bing would eventually tie Google in market share. But as these changes have rolled out, Google has stabilized its free-fall in market share, leaving Bing with a substantial 30% US share, but that number has not budged in a year.

Will Google keep innovating? Certainly. Google is worried about not just Bing but Facebook and other threats. And maybe it will even accelerate the pace. If you have a Web site, you need to familiarize yourself with these changes so you can understand the new ways to succeed at search marketing. Check out the full set of slides for The 5 Things You Need to Know about the New Google Search.

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Bing: Here’s How To Become An Authority

11 Feb

It looks like Bing’s counterpart to Google’s Matt Cutts, Duane Forrester, is now putting out Matt Cutts-style webmaster videos for Bing Webmaster Tools.

He posted this one about becoming an authority by building quality content and sharing properly:

Video: Bing Webmaster Tools: Duane Forrester on Establishing Authority in Bing

“You being an authority means you’re an expert. You rank better,” says Forrester. “You get more traffic.That just leads to better business success for you, which is what you want.”

“The first thing is, you need to focus on fundamentals here,” he says. “What we’re really talking about is the quality you have – the quality of content you build and the quality of sharing you do socially. Those are really two critically important points.”

He gives an example of “how to build quality content” using eBay.

“Let me give you two scenarios,” he continues. “One: you’re going to sell a cordless drill on eBay, and you’re just going to take the standard information, images and such. Now, the second example, we’re going to sell the same product – the same cordless drill – but we’re actually going to take videos of that cordless drill in use. We’re going to show that cordless drill in its packaging, in its wrapper, in every way possible. We are going to amplify it. Lots of extra pictures. We’re going to do this all on our own. We’re going to write up descriptions. We’re going to put all of that together.”

“It’s pretty clear to see here by these descriptions that we’re going to have a standard view of an item for sale, and a really deep, rich, immersive view of an item for sale,” says Forrester.

The second version, he says, is the “quality”.

“That is what people are looking for to answer their questions,” he continues. “So when that comes to you content, you have to think of it in terms of, ‘Have I answered all of the questions this searcher has? Have I done it to a depth that satisfies them?’ If you can do that, you need to move on to the next step, which is sharing properly.”

“You get out there, and you’re sharing things on Facebook, or you’re putting it on Twitter. Any of the social media spaces that you like and you frequent, you’re putting this stuff out there.”

He says that before you submit this stuff, you have to ask yourself: Will my tweet or my post bring quality to my followers or my friends?

“That is a critical step,” he emphasizes. “They want you to bring them quality. They need you to bring them quality. You need to bring them quality. If you don’t bring them quality, they’re going to stop following you. If you bring them good quality links either to your content or to related content, they will continually engage with you. They will share you. They will like you. They will amplify that for you. That amplification – that signals that you’re becoming an authority socially.”

“Pull all of that together,” he says. “Now you’re starting to see things as the search engine sees it.

More on Forrester’s thoughts about search and social from a presentation he gave at BlogWorld in November can be found here.


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SEO Isn’t Bad and Ads Don’t Help Rankings

08 Feb

Google once again found themselves in the midst of unwanted attention after Jonathan Rockway, an employee was caught saying: “Instead of being able to SEO the entire Internet, businesses can now only affect the search results for a tiny percentage of users. That’s a good thing because SEO can’t scale, and SEO isn’t good for users or the Internet at large.”

The highlighted part of the statement made by Mr Rockway, is something that goes directly against Google. Over the years, Google has repeatedly maintained that they do not consider SEOs to be spams. As a matter of fact, in October last year, Matt Cutts did an entire video giving a detailed description behind the reasoning why Google does not consider SEOs to be spams. Please be noted that Mr Cutts is the head of Google’s web spam team.

Another worrying comment made by Mr Rockway has been quoted below:

“If you look at the Google experience from the standpoint of customers, it’s pretty good. Users get relevant search results and ads. Advertisers get their content on top of everything else. It’s a good compromise between advertising and usability, and it works really well. It’s a bug that you could rank highly in Google without buying ads, and Google is trying to fix the bug.”

Once again the highlighted part of the statement by Mr Rockway is particularly worrisome, as it goes on to suggest that if you want to rank well on Google, you will have to buy ads.

Though three days after making the initial comment Mr Rockwaymade a corrective statement, “I shouldnt have mentioned ads here. Position on the results page should only depend on the quality of your content; if your site has the best content on the Internet for the users search terms, you should be the top result. You shouldnt be able to change your position in the organic results any other way, like by exploiting bugs in Googles ranking algorithm. The specifics of the ranking algorithm may change, but if your site is the best, you wont have to worry about it.” This statement sort of took care of the ads issue, but SEO comment is still open for speculation.

Google jumped onto the sinking ship trying to salvage some lost pride by confirming again and saying that “As always, Google search rankings are completely unrelated to Googles paid advertising services and other partnerships, and there is absolutely no way for a webmaster to pay money to increase search rankings.” and “When it comes to SEO, many owners of high-quality sites can and do get their site listed well in Googles search results without any outside help. Some site owners prefer to have someone else check and optimize their sites, and for these folks weve published some guidelines relating to evaluating SEO companies.”

Google has said that Mr Rockway is new employee at Google who just about completed one month of employment, perhaps hinting that he is not fully acquainted with how Google works. This seems no more than a case of misunderstanding.

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Googler: SEO Is A Bug, And Google Is Trying To Fix It

07 Feb

Six days ago, a Google engineer, who just started with the company this year, posted to Hacker News to ask, “What is so evil about adding social networking features to everyone’s account?” “You have a Docs account and a Picasa …


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Google Changes How Average Search Ranking Position is Calculated

07 Feb

There is no doubt that Google continues to make changes in its search algorithm to return more and more accurate results. This is evident by the latest change ” the Top Search Queries feature has been updated so that it lives up to the expectations of its users.

With this update Google has given a new definition to the “average position” term as used in Google Webmaster Tool’s search query reports and Google Analytics SEO reports. Previously Google reported the average position of all URLs from your site for a given query, but now Google will average only the top position that a URL from your site appeared in.

Confused? Don’t worry, we were too. Luckily Google has provided an example to explain the situation better:

Let’s say Nick searched for -bacon- and URLs from your site appeared in positions 3, 6, and 12. Jane also searched for -bacon- and URLs from your site appeared in positions 5 and 9. Previously, we would have averaged all these positions together and shown an Average Position of 7. Going forward, we’ll only average the highest position your site appeared in for each search (3 for Nick’s search and 5 for Jane’s search), for an Average Position of 4.

Top Search Average Position

With this change Google expects that this new method of calculation will more accurately match the expectations of how a link’s position in Google Search results should be reported.

What will this update mean to webmasters?

Your data in the Google Analytics Search Engine Optimization reports will be calculated using the new method and you will see a change in

  • Your Top Search Queries data reports

  • Your SEO reports

However your data will not be affected historically since this change in calculation method is based on the principle that ‘the Average Position metric will usually stay the same or decrease, corresponding to the same or improved search ranking.’

Average Position in Google Webmaster Tools :

webmaster-avg-position

Average Position in Google Analytics :

google-ave-position-report

If you’re still a little confused, check out the Google Webmaster Blog and Google Analytics Blog for more info.

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Google Shows Twitter Results In “Search Plus Your World” Fashion

04 Feb

Ian Lurie at Conversion Marketing claims to have seen Twitter results appearing in Google search results in “Search Plus Your World” fashion. He shows a screen cap to back up his claim. It’s not the People and Places box or …


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Google’s Latest Algorithm Changes (Freshness Update Gets Updated)

03 Feb

Google rolled out “Search Plus Your World” in January, but that’s not the only change they made to how they deliver search results. Not even close. If you’ve been following, you may know that Google has been putting out blog …


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Google Panda Update Addressed In New Google Announcement

03 Feb

Google today listed changes it made to its algorithm in January. As previously discussed, the biggest takeaway from that (at least in my opinion) was an increased focus on freshness through not only updates to the “Freshness Update,” but also …


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Matt Cutts Sheds More Light On Google’s Quality Raters Process

02 Feb

Internet marketer Jennifer Ledbetter (otherwise known as PotPieGirl) wrote a post last month about the Google Quality Raters (you know, those people Google’s Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal talked about in that famous Wired interview about the Panda update, which …


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Local Paid Inclusion And What Bruce Clay Said About It Ahead Of The New Year

02 Feb

This week, Bruce Clay, a respected search engine marketing agency (whose founder WebProNews has interviewed many times) launched something called Local Paid Inclusion. The official description said: Local Paid Inclusion is a Google, Yahoo and Bing contracted service and is …


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Twitter, Organic Links & The Elderly

02 Feb

Today’s infographic round-up features an ode to the organic link from SEOBook, a look at whether or not you should be using Twitter, and how we care for our disabled and elderly. View more daily infographic round-ups here. Should you …


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Google Hides +1 Button In Search Results

02 Feb

Google used to show the +1 button on all of its search results at the same time, meaning you could look at a page, and see the button on each one. Now, you have to mouse over a result to …


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Google Panda, Google+, and Other Search Events of 2011

02 Feb

It’s hard to believe that 2011 is drawing to a close, but it is. That said, if you could sum up the search industry over the course of the year in one word, what would it be? According to search veteran Bruce Clay, that word is “turmoil.”


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Don’t Be Evil Tool To Show Google’s Bias in Search Results

02 Feb

A couple of weeks ago, Google launched Search Plus Your World, a new feature that displays social information alongside regular data in Googles search results. The goal of SPYW is to further personalise search results to deliver the most relevant data for you, which is some cases may come from your personal network.

Shortly after the announcement, Twitter and Facebook raised concerns about the new feature, claiming that Google will favour their own Google+ pages and profiles in the top results. To demonstrate this point, the two came together to build FocusOnTheUser.org, a site that allows you to modify Google search results to remove the SPYW emphasis on Google+ results.

Below is a video which demonstrates how the bookmarklet works,

In case you didn’t watch the video, the demonstration outlines a number of queries where Google displays Google+ profiles alongside regular search results. In order to determine if these Google+ profiles are the most relevant social result, the tool runs a Google query for the person’s name and returns the top social results for the query instead of the “hardcoded” Google+ result.

For example, below is an example of how the tool modifies search results for “music”,

As you can see, Google+ profiles are replaced with higher ranked results from Twitter, Myspace and Facebook.

Following the release of this tool, Google has copped criticism that they’ve abandoned their “don’t be evil” mantra and have started focusing on promoting their own products and services.

Earlier this week, search engine land interviewed Google search Chief Amit Singal, who addressed some of the concerns raised above. Here is his answer from the interview,

Q: But what about the Don’t Be Evil tool launched this week, showing that you can create People & Pages results that do go beyond Google+ content.

This is where I’m saying most people are jumping to a conclusion based on the first two weeks of the product. We’re designing a product which it will work for all individuals. It will have identities as a fundamental ingredient of search and relationships as another fundamental ingredient of search.

All this debate is centered around these very popular people out there, and what you could have done for them, and what makes the most sense. But when you’re developing a product, you don’t want to develop it for one segment of the population.

I’ve not seen the debate that I have a -personal- friend named Ben Smith, and when I try to search for him, I get bad results. If you actually build a product only for popular people, then it undermines what we are trying to do. You can’t build a product that behaves differently for one class of people then differently for the real relationships that matter for you.

I feel like this point has not been emphasized enough. People have gotten stuck on these very popular names, and no one has been focused on the cool part of the product where you can find people you care about.

At the end of the day, Google has to manage a very careful balancing act between their Google+ social network and their search results. Let’s hope they get it right.

As always, let us know what you think of the issue via the comments below.

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Google: No More Panda Updates This Year

02 Feb

Google formally announced via Twitter that there will be no more Panda updates for the remainder of the year. Granted, there’s not that much left of the year. This might have been nice to know a little bit earlier, but …


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44% Of World Advertising Market Owned By Google

02 Feb

As compared to 2006, Googles share of the global advertising market has increased by 10% or from a 34.9% in 2006 to 44.1% in 2010! this phenomenal growth has established Google firmly as a Juggernaut in online advertising. ZenithOptimedia has prepared this financial report,that shows that Google is growing unaffected by the economic slowdown.

As ZenithOptimedia is quoted, Over this time Google has tightened its grip on global search (raising its share of searches from 72% in 2006 to 85% now) and established a lead in traditional display and online video with the help of the acquisition and development of companies like DoubleClick and YouTube. In addition, its three main early competitors (Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL) have failed to match this pace of development and lost a lot of ground; their combined market share fell from 33.1% in 2006 to 13.8% in 2010.

According to the report, Facebook has grown too, and as compared to 2006, is now a major supplier with a market share of 3.1% in 2010. Facebook over took AOL in 2010 and seeing the current growth is expected to leave Microsoft behind by the end of 2011.

ZenithOptimedia has made growth predictions in global ad spend till 2014, as things will continue to look up despite the crisis in Europe. The reason behind this sustained growth are the events that occur every four years.

We quote, Every four years the quadrennial events- the summer Olympics, the European Football Championship and the US Presidential and other elections- provide a reliable boost to the global ad market. This time we expect the combination of the quadrennial effect and the Japanese recovery to add US$ 7 billion to ad expenditure in 2012. Without this extra stimulus, ad expenditure would grow 3.1% next year, slightly less than this year.

Global Ad Market Growth Predictions:

ZenithOptmedia has predicted these figures for the world markets.

  • Western Europe- Due to the economic turmoil, will grow by just 2.0% in 2012. However, the improvements in economy may see a 2.8% growth in 2013 and 3.3% in 2014. Global ad expenditure would grow by 3.2%.

  • Central & Eastern Europe- Will see a growth of 9.6% a year.

  • North America- A 3.6% growth in North American ad expenditure in 2012, which will grow to 3.7% in 2013 and 4.4% in 2014.

  • Latin America- is predicted to grow by 7.3% a year.

  • Japan- In 2012, the ad expenditure growth is predicted at 3.1%. Where as the growth will be 1.9 and 2.5 percent in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
  • Asia Pacific (Barring Japan)- Markets will grow by an average of 10.4% a year.

Other Parts of the World- As ZenithOptimedia further predicts, The exception is the Middle East & North Africa, where political turmoil has disrupted media production and distribution, and made advertisers wary of attracting negative attention. We forecast the Middle East & North Africa to grow at an average of 1.3% between 2011 and 2014. Overall we expect developing markets which we here define as everywhere outside North America, Western Europe and Japan- to increase their share of the global ad market from 32.3% in 2011 to 35.9% in 2014.

Paid advertising will account for almost half the expenditure in the internet advertising segment. However, the growth rate of 15.7% per year is impacted by the mobile ad market. Display advertising segment has an impressive growth at 18.9 percent per year and will continue trailing paid search into 2014, taking 22.6 and 25.6 percent, respectively.

Global Ad Expenditure Predictions:

According to ZenithOptimedia, till 2014, 48% of the total global ad expenditure growth will come from 10 developing markets. The BRIC- as in Brazil, Russia, India, and China markets will account for a full 33%.

Another prediction puts internet advertising share increasing to 21.2 percent. The present top players- Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the UK account for more than 25% of total spend. But in 2014, Canada is expected to join in the top spenders by replacing Denmark.

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Google & “Young Babysitters”: An Exercise In Pornified Phenomenology

02 Feb

Do you ever play that game where you Google random words or phrases like “ice cream” or “Kevin” or “filipino” just to see how far up in the results the first pornography page shows up? It’s a good holiday game. …


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Google’s New Drop Down Menu to Navigation

02 Feb

Many of you must have noticed it by now. The new Google menu bar! We bet youre wondering if this is just another Google design experiment? Well the news is that this redesign is here to stay (at least for a little while).

Google has bid adieu to its horizontal black navigation bar at the top of the page and has introduced a new drop-down menu right under the Google logo which contains all the essential Google properties like Maps, News, Translate, Gmail and the remaining services clumped under the ‘More’ tab.

Google have announced this change as part of the next stage of their redesign, the new menu bar has a more consistent & streamlined look that allows users to quickly navigate between the Google services and share their experiences on Google+ with people on their Google Circles.

Here’s how it looks:

new-google-bar

This new navigation bar is not only compact with all the necessary Google services listed on it but also frees up some additional space on the top of your screen. Google have also added some new services to the menu bar that were not included in the previous version including Google Wallet, Google Offers, Google Music, Google Mobile and Blogger to name a few.

And do you want to know a secret trick to this toolbar? By mousing over the Google logo you will get access to Gmail, Google Docs and other select services.

Google says the change will be rolling out “over the next few days,” so it might take a little for your black toolbar to disappear.

If you cannot wait till then, follow these instructions to try the new toolbar menu:

  • If you use Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+, open google.com in a new tab

  • Load Chrome’s JavaScript console (Ctrl+Shift+J), Firefox’s Web Console (Ctrl+Shift+K), Safari’s Web Inspector or IE’s Developer Tools (press F12 and select the “console” tab) and paste the following code:

document.cookie="PREF=ID=03fd476a699d6487:U=88e8716486ff1e5d: FF=0:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1322688084:LM=1322688085:S=McEsyvcXKMiVfGds; path=/; domain=.google.com";window.location.reload();

  • Then press Enter and close the console. If you’re not in the US and you’re using a different Google domain, replace “.google.com” with your domain in the code (for example: “.google.co.uk” in the UK). Please note that this only works for the English interface.

Google has also released a video that demonstrates the new drop down menu which you can view below.

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Glitch in Google AdWords Keyword Tool Shows Zero Results

02 Feb

In an embarrassing oversight for Google recently, its AdWords Keyword tool was showing zero results for exact match searches for certain keywords.

Some users on the Google AdWords Help Forum reported that their volume reports had suddenly dropped down from 1300 searches for an exact match search to zero.

Although this problem was first reported as early as Thanksgiving (23rd Nov 2011) and initially thought to be an update in the AdWords interface, almost all AdWords users were soon convinced that it was happening because of a bug. No updates or statements were issued by Google making this issue a matter of growing concern for AdWords users worldwide.

However, the good news is that  it seems Google as finally taken note of this matter, a Google spokesperson has confirmed that this was happening due to a bug in the AdWords Keyword Tool.

Here is what a Google representative told Search Engine Land after they asked for confirmation of the issue:

Were aware of a potential issue that is affecting the keyword tool in AdWords, and are working hard to fix it.

Although a list of exact keywords affected was not available it was found that a random selection of keywords were reporting zero for volume including long tail, middle tail, short tail and head keywords were affected at both global and local volumes. A number of popular terms like ipod, dogs and wine, were among the list of affected keywords. Here is a screen shot of the some of the impacted keywords as they appeared in the AdWords keyword tool report.

Google Keywords Tool Zero Volume

Some users tried testing to see if this problem was region specific but it seems to be a global problem rather than being confined to any particular continent or country.

Google havent provided a date/time on when they expect this bug to be fixed, but as soon as we know anything more, we will be sure to update this post.

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Google Authorship Clicks And Impressions Added To Webmaster Tools

02 Feb

We know that who you are is more important in Google now. Google has been pushing authorship markup for months. This ties you, as an author of content, to your Google Profile, which is linked to from a picture of …


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Google Launches Author Stats

02 Feb

Google is working to improve the authorship results in search, and in the line of the same, has launched Author Stats. This new tool located in Webmaster Tools lets authors know the frequency of their content showing in search results.

According to Google this move is post the huge response they got from authors. We quote Google, We’re introducing Author Stats in Webmaster Tools that shows you how often your content is showing up on the Google search results page. If you associate your content with your Google Profile either via e-mail verification or a simple link, you can visit Webmaster Tools to see how many impressions and clicks your content got on the Google search results page.

As an example shown, this is how Matt Cutts Author Stats will look like-

Authorship

Google recently introduced improvements in the way authorship annotations are displayed in search results. And now has come up with Author Stats. Want to explore this new tool? You can see it on the left hand panel, under the Labs section. Do share your views about this addition.

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Did Google’s Panda Updates Really Impact Content Farms?

02 Feb

With Google releasing no less than 7 different Panda updates in 2011, now is the perfect time to see if these changes have made any difference to search results. New Scientist magazine recently published an article on the topic that claims search engines have won a major victory in their battle against content farms.

The magazine came to this conclusion after hiring University of Glasgow computer scientist Richard McCreadie to study 50 different search queries which were known to be a target of content farms. Examples of these queries include “how to organise your desktop” and “how to train for a marathon“.

According to the article, as recently as March, the first 10 results from a Google search for “how to organise your desktop” contained nine links to pages churned out by content farms ” websites that publish reams of articles, often of dubious quality, that aim simply to attract clicks and advertising dollars.

Google then released a number of “Panda” algorithm updates which aimed at filtering out these questionable search results. According to Mr McCreadie these changes have made an impact,

In the case of the marathon query, sites that contained lists of generic tips, such as “invest in a good pair of running shoes”, were present in the top 10 in March but had disappeared by August, while high-quality sources, such as Runner’s World magazine, now appear near the top. Similar trends were found throughout the 50 queries.

Well known content sites like ehow.com have also backed up the findings, stating that their traffic has dropped by 20 percent following Google’s series of Panda updates.

In related news, Google have also stated that there will be no further Panda updates in 2011 ” but webmasters can expect more fine tuning in the new year.

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Matt Cutts Talks Keyword Density

02 Feb

Google has put out a new Webmaster Help video, featuring (as usual) head of web spam Matt Cutts. This time, Cutts is answering his own question, rather than a user-submitted question. The question is: What is the ideal keyword density: …


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The Secret Influence Of Search Behavior

02 Feb

Did you know that Rachel Ray grounds up toasted pumpkin seeds, adds some herbs and uses the mixture to coat chicken? Me neither. One day, after my daughter mentioned this to me, I started thinking about how peoples eating habits are changing everywhere. More fast food restaurants serve healthier, lower fat meals. Todays families use different herbs to prepare food than their parents generation. In my house, you may find your salad has apple, pineapple or oranges in it.

A few years ago, I would never have had the idea to do that to a salad. Nor would there have been printed recipes from Rachel Rays web site piled on the kitchen counter.

Whats happening?

The Internet. How? By making more information available online, our habits are changing. Were teaching one another new tricks and evolving together. Were sharing more stories by way of social networking. Were learning new ways for doing the same old things. Were willing to be talked into most anything, especially if we read it on the web, in an email from a friend or click a search engine result that looks credible.

Consider this example. In my town during the Atkins diet craze, all the products in the junk food, cereal, pasta and refined carbohydrates aisles were marked down drastically because everybody was afraid to eat that stuff. Not only was the book a top seller, but search engines were bonanzas of information for anyone wanting to understand how to lose weight by living on bacon and salad.

Not only could you research Atkins online, you could join forums, read testimonials, see pictures of success stories and purchase their products online. The web made it easy, fast, believable and hip. For awhile, based on keyword analysis, conversions and skyrocketing sales, Atkins was our weight loss hero.

Every link tells a story


Why are some of us eating more wild hickory nuts? One possible influencer is so subtle you barely know its there ” links. The web explodes with links willing to lead you around. We follow because a link is feedback. Its a vote. Its a pointer. Well click on links that create interest, promise to answer a question or take us to a form. Links can tell us a story about our changing habits because we watch where people go and what they do once they get there. Search engines and keyword analysis use links like psychics use crystal balls.

Links are tracked and measured by people looking for the story behind link patterns. Therefore, if nobody is buying wild hickory nuts this month, is it because they have no idea what they are, werent transported by other sites to buy nuts, or perhaps the click path to purchase them is too confusing?

To persuade a site visitor to buy wild hickory nuts, link anchor text and content around the links will contain reasons to do so, such as no fat, no salt, and no sugar. Trigger words such as save 50% today or free sample may convince even the nut-hater to try some.

Youve just influenced someone to try something new by adding a dash of organic SEO, creating momentum and offering value proposition. Youve also done your part in the evolution of human change in eating habits.

A world with no smileys


Darwin had a fixation on facial expressions. He studied how humans developed ways of communicating with smiles, frowns, raised eyebrows and puckered lips. His discoveries showed how we share many of the same facial muscles as chimps and how ancient fish that later became land animals, no longer needed gills and fins and began to use their faces, ears and tails to communicate.

With computers, we started out with text in the form of email discussion groups, online chats and blogs. To communicate emotions, we rely on emoticons, specific words and grammar. Despite this, we tend to foul up communication because we cant see eyes and faces or hear the tone of voice.

So how do we gauge intent online?


Again, we can turn to search. Through search engines we look for evidence of credibility. We can search for outside resources for verification of claims. In place of emoticons, web site designers can include heuristics on authenticity by adding pages covering expertise, work experience, testimonials and provide a history of stability and commitment to an industry, genre or to the web site itself.

People look for what is believable or not by looking for evidence of credibility and authenticity. They turn to the web for this information, using social media and sites that offer news, opinion and research. As we become more dependent on which sites and software we trust to give us accurate information, we want more ways of getting to it.

For this reason, cell phones and hand held devices are changing our habits and influencing our decisions. Google maps help us drive our cars. We no longer need to stop and grab a map from the glove box. OnStar can diagnose your car and email you its findings. We no longer have to make an appointment with a mechanic to know what the car needs.

How did you know to trust Google Maps? What made you sign up for OnStar services? Most likely it was based on user feedback, search engine research to help make decisions, and online marketing.

Has your routine changed? Do you look up Consumer Reports online before purchasing a new home appliance? Have you compared insurance policies on the internet? Its not too difficult to see how computers and search are so integrated into our lives that we may one day press a spot on our wrist where a tiny computer is embedded into our skin that gives us instant access to information on anything.

I wonder what Darwin would think of that.

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Paid Search Spending Up 21% For Tech and Consumer Electronics

02 Feb

A recent spending analysis by Covario found that spending for paid search advertising increased 21% in 2011 for high-tech and consumer electronics. This far exceeds original expectations, which were somewhere between 15% – 20%.

As to be expected, Google dominated the paid search scene in 2011 with a global market share of 76%, with an annual spending growth of 27% over the previous year. Paid search spend was down nearly 18% for the Bing/Yahoo advertising platform. Overseas Baidu saw growth of 185% over 2010.

Covario CEO, Russ Mann, looked ahead to 2012 and recommends that global advertisers keep pace with the overall competition and increase their search spending by 18% – 22%.

“Asia/Pacific continues to be where the major growth opportunities exist for global search marketers in the high-tech industry,” Mann said. “The economies in North America, led by the U.S. and Canada, are also stabilizing and are poised for stronger growth in 2012. On the other hand, growth in search spending in Europe will further decelerate due to the macro-economic slowdown and political unrest in the region.”

It’ll be interesting to see where we’re at this time next year that is if the Mayans had it wrong, and we make it past December 21, 2012.

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2011: Year Of The (Google) Panda

02 Feb

Perhaps the biggest story line in Internet search this year has been the ongoing saga of the Google Panda Update. Let’s recap, and look ahead to next year. Has Panda been the most significant thing to happen in search this …


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The Future of Search and Social According to Bing

02 Feb

In the past, SEO had little or nothing to do with social media sites. It was always thought of an IT professionals task of getting your site and content easily found on the search engines and social media was just a personal way of keeping in touch with your friends. But that is not the case in the present day, the past couple of years have seen the line between SEO and social media blur and social media has now become one of the core areas of online marketing plans.

So what is it that makes social such an important part of search nowadays?

Bing says it is because of the change in user behavior. 2011 saw Google and Microsoft shift from delivering search results based on stereotypical algorithms to more personalize results that are based on what you and your friends recommend and follow on various social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Marketing is all about keenly observing human nature and behavior and adapting a business strategy accordingly. Search engines are no different. Bing says they have watched your search behavior and pattern to study and understand how you think and subsequently display search results that will help you complete your search faster. Visual signals like the number of likes and tweets received  play a crucial role in how your business ranks on the SERPs.

According to Bing, SEO backed with social media is the perfect formula to maintain your inbound visitors and to make your content marketing strategy work today and tomorrow. But it will not happen instantly. You have to invest your time and efforts into making your business visible on the SERPs. Start interacting with your followers, build a relationship with them, deliver quality items to them so that you earn their loyalty and in return they will spread your business all over the web.

Social media is here to stay so if you havent already, then the new year is the perfect time to build the social media presence of your business. Here is Bings Duane Forrester main tip to increasing your social media presence:

    Be engaged. Easy to say; time consuming, all-encompassing and life altering to put into action.  The simple truth is that if you want to get the most out of social and the benefits it can have on search, you need to invest in it.  You need to build a relationship with followers where you deliver quality items to them, and they remain loyal to you because youre the best.  No easy task, as youre going to need to experiment with topics, post types, link structure, time of day, day of week, tone, the type of hook you use and so on (ego, humor, controversy, etc.).
    This is not something that happens overnight, so as youve heard so many times, create a plan.  Execute that plan and stick to it for a while.  If you are diligent, you will build a social following and become a resource to those following you.  What a good example of how to get it right?  Guy Kawasaki nails it time and again.  Short, simple, catchy tweets.  Each with a link to highly interesting, useful items.  He runs an 8 hour cycle, ensuring 3 tweets a day for each item, which means pretty much everyone has a chance to see his posts at least once.  He has a team that helps him manage this, but the path is pretty clear and the results speak for themselves.

Where does social media fit into your marketing plan for 2012? I hope it features quite heavily because the benefits to your business will be great in the long run.

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BBC Catches Google Running Illegal Ads In UK

02 Feb

According to a sensational investigative report, British Broadcasting Company(BBC) claims that Google is in hot water again. BBC has blamed Google.co.uk for running ads for illegal Olympic ticket resellers, ads for cannabis and ads for fake UK passports and identification cards.

Google US had faced similar problem back in August 2011. Google was then caught red handed for helping Canadian pharmacy to advertise and sell drugs to the US consumers, a grave violation of US Federal Laws. This incident cooled down with Google being slapped a massive $ 500 million fine to U.S Department Of Justice, and now with only five months on, Google UK has yet another similar problem at hand.

It is apparent that search giant has learned nothing from their previous mistake, this time around though, Google cashed on upcoming London Olympics 2012 fever. Ads like illegal Olympic ticket resellers, ads for cannabis and ads for fake UK passports were said to be doing rounds online, until they were taken down. This matter was brought to BBC’s notice by a consumer, who grew suspicious of its legality, when she was asked to fax her signature for completion of ticket purchase. She was purchasing her tickets through LiveOlympicsTickets, an illegal Olympic ticket reseller, appearing on Google’s AdWords. Please be noted, that it is a crime in the UK to sell/resell Olympics tickets without the permission of organizing committee.

The latest incident highlights an everlasting problem at Google, and proves it is going through conflict of interests, made evident by raising profit from the very ads they say they are committed to monitor. Though Google has accepted they have done the illegal but they still haven’t paid the price for breaking the law. This matter is sure to evolve in coming days with a trial against Google, most probably on cards.
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Google On Targeting Parts Of Your Site To Different Locations

02 Feb

Google recently put out a new webmaster help video with Matt Cutts discussing how to target parts of a site to different locations. The exact question Matt addresses in the video is: “Webmaster tools allows site owners to specify a …


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Google Introduces Search Plus Your World

01 Feb

Google yesterday added a new dimension to its existing search engine by introducing, Search plus Your World. This feature will integrate personal results, mainly from Google+, into SERPs. This essentially means that information like People, Pages and Profiles will now be seen on the result pages. Lets have a closer look at the features :

Personal Results from Google+ Available in SERPs:

Google Introduces Search Plus Your World

Users now have a choice about the kind of search they are interested in. Google has a personalization toggle icon at the top right hand side of the search page, the user now has a choice of including the relevant posts and pictures of his friends on Google+ or an option of drilling down unnecessary information by viewing normal result page.

Google Introduces Search Plus Your World

Making the most of their promoting edge over Facebook and other social networking sites, search result page interestingly shows only results from Google+, leaving out Facebook and others in the cold. Google officials have cited that, term of service set by Facebook and other sites prevents them from crawling through deeper and retrieve information.

Google+ Profiles In Search:

Google tries to reason out the main idea, behind the concept of incorporating Google+ profiles in search, through a published post on their official blog. The statement reads :

Every day, there are hundreds of millions of searches for people. Sometimes, its hard to find the person youre looking for. Once you do find him or her, theres no quick way for you to actually interact. Starting today, youll have meaningful ways to connect with people instantly, right from the search results.

Google Introduces Search Plus Your World

As the user types in the first few alphabets of a person’s name, Google now autocompletes and bring up its own results in SERPs, where Google+ profile and other web results are highlighted. Once the desired person is found, users can view all the relevant web information that Google attributes to that person, bypassing all others sharing the same name. This will also allow the signed in Google+ users to add prominent Google+ profiles to their Circle directly from SERPs.

People and Pages:

When searched for a particular topic like cricket or laptops, Google will now show prominent people who frequently discuss it on Google+. This page will appear at the right hand side of the result page, encouraging users to strike meaningful conversations through Google+ and discover communities in an easy and never done before way.

Google Introduces Search Plus Your World

New Security Level for SERPs:

Search plus Your World result pages will share the same protection level as that of Gmail via SSL encryption. This could come in as a relief for many who are worried about their Google+ profile and posts, appearing in search results, will leave them vulnerable. However this feature will not work if the user is not signed in, once you’ve logged onto Google and a search is made then all your search results including your own personal contents are safe.

Search plus Your World will be rolled out in next few days for logged in users searching English keywords at https://www.google.com.

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Google Caught Buying Paid Links

01 Feb

… Penalizes Their Own Website. Google have penalized their own Google Chrome website after it emerged that the URL was caught up in a paid links promotion, a violation of their webmaster guidelines.

The problem has arisen after Google paid Unruly Media, an international media agency, to get a number of paid bloggers to promote a video for its Chrome browser featuring a US flour company. While the campaign might have had good intentions, the posts ended up creating a lot of junk content and links to download Google Chrome which were subsequently indexed by Google.

Here are some examples of posts about Google chrome that pass PageRank through paid links and contain low quality content,

As you can see from the images above, the first post contains a link to the Google Chrome download page and the second post does not mention anything about Google chrome until the last sentence.

Surprisingly, it’s not the first time this has happened. Back in 2010, Google banned their AdWords help pages because of cloaking; a black hat technique that serves up different pages to search engines and users.

Google’s Response

Google has responded to the findings just like they would any other website ” with a penalty. Google have demoted the rankings of the www.google.com/chrome (the page has dropped from page 1 to page 7 for the keyword “browser”) and reduced the PageRank of the chrome landing page.

Even a search for “Google Chrome” does not show any organic results for www.google.com/chrome, instead the top link is from Google’s support pages,

Here’s the full statement from Google’s Matt Cutts,

I’ll give the short summary, then I’ll describe the webspam team’s response. Google was trying to buy video ads about Chrome, and these sponsored posts were an inadvertent result of that. If you investigated the two dozen or so sponsored posts (as the webspam team immediately did), the posts typically showed a Google Chrome video but didn’t actually link to Google Chrome. We double-checked, and the video players weren’t flowing PageRank to Google either.

However, we did find one sponsored post that linked to www.google.com/chrome in a way that flowed PageRank. Even though the intent of the campaign was to get people to watch videos”not link to Google”and even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Google’s Chrome page and passed PageRank, that’s still a violation of our quality guidelines, which you can find at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3 .

In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would. During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also won’t trust outgoing links from that page.

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Aaron Wall Interview: Google Paid Link Story Wrap-Up

01 Feb

The topic of paid links is in the headlines once again, and ironically, Google is the accused. As WebProNews previously reported, Google was recently caught up in a controversy after it violated its own Webmaster Guidelines as part of a marketing campaign for Google Chrome.


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Google Expands Flight Search

01 Feb

Google’s Flight Search feature was launched in September 2011. Though Google hasn’t shared the exact number of routes added but have hinted that Flight Search has expanded to almost double its size since inception.

Google Expands Flight Search

Previously, this feature was limited to big cities around the world. Google’s Flight Search, now provides information about domestic flight routes in the US including domestic airports, of lesser known cities, through which they pass. With so much achieved, we still have numerous flight routes that haven’t made the cut yet. We are assuming it’s only matter of time, before all the domestic US routes and domestic airports are made available on Flight Search feature.

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30 Recent Google Search Quality Changes

01 Feb

Google recently produced a list of updates and improvements they made to their search in the month of December 2011 and its well worth a quick scan for anyone who is serious about their websites Google ranking.

The list contains 30 improvements and the associated codenames with a sneak peak into how the company comes up with the unique internal codenames for each improvement made that makes it easier for them and us to talk refer and remember them individually.

The December list includes:

  • Image Search landing page quality signals: This was an update that analyzes various landing page signals for Image Search that not only gave users the most relevant images, but also is linked to the highest quality source pages. Launched with codename “simple”

  • More relevant sitelinks: -project codename “Megasitelinks”- Changes in the Google algorithm for picking sitelinks to get more relevant sitelinks; that users could control with their location settings. Launch codename “concepts.”

  • Soft 404 Detection: A status code returned to users when someone searches for a page that doesn’t exist. soft 404s (codenamed “crypto” 404s) have always been a problem area for search engines because users might get this code due to a mix of reasons instead of mere code errors. With the soft 404s update Google improved its method of detecting soft 404s, especially for pages in Russian, German and Spanish.

  • More accurate country-restricted searches: Users who want to see results only from their particular country other than the domains on .com will benefit from this a new algorithmic update by Google that uses several signals to enhance & determine where are web documents coming from, improving the precision of this feature. -launch codename “greencr”-

  • More rich snippets: Users should look forward to see more site with rich snippets after this improvement as Google will now detect sites that qualify for shopping, recipe and review rich snippets.

  • Better infrastructure for autocomplete: An infrastructure change to improve how Google’s autocomplete algorithm handles spelling corrections for query prefixes (the beginning part of a search).

  • Better spam detection in Image Search: Google fortified its spam detection in Image Search by extending algorithms that are already being used for main search results. -launch codename “leaf”-

  • Google Instant enhancements for Japanese: This update will work with browsers that are IME (Input Method Editor)-aware and will cater to return better results for Japanese queries in Google Instant.

  • More accurate byline dates: An update that allows Google to better establish an association with a date and a document. As a result, users will see more accurate dates explaining search results. . -launch codename “foby”-

  • Live results for NFL and college football: There is good news for all football fans; Project codename “Live Results”; an update by Google on NFL.com and ESPN’s NCAA Football results that allows real time relay of scores, schedules and analysis of your favorite football teams.

  • Improved dataset for related queries: Google often returns results that are related to the original search. Google has now introduced an improved dataset on term relationships to find related queries that will lead to results from more relevant related queries.

  • Related query improvements: You must have often received results for your search query that have fewer words and are less related to your original query. Google has now made several changes to its algorithms so that you get fewer results that do not include your main search words. -launch codename “lyndsy”-

  • Better lyrics results: This change improves the result quality for lyrics searches on Google. -launch codename “baschi”, project codename “Contra”-

  • Tweak to +1 button on results page: To make search a simple, quick and well displayed experience, Google has made a minor change to how the +1 button appears on the results page. Unlike before, the +1 button will only appear when you hover over a result or when the result has already been +1′d.

  • Better spell correction in Vietnamese: A new Vietnamese spelling model launched to return more accurate spelling predictions for Vietnamese queries. -project codename “Pho Viet”-

  • Upcoming events at venues: An update to the places panel for event venues. For major venues, users will now see up to three upcoming events on the right of the page. Give it a go for search terms like -staples center los angeles- or -paradise rock club boston-.

  • Improvements to image size signal: An improvement to how Google uses the size of images as a ranking signal in Image Search. Following this update, users will see more full-sized, larger versions of an image. -launch codename “matter”-

  • Improved Hebrew synonyms: -project codename “Synonyms”- as context matters a lot for translation, Google has updated its way of handling and refining searches for Hebrew synonyms across multiple languages. This change will omit the use of translated synonyms that are not actually relevant to the query context -launch codename “SweatNovember”-.

  • Safer searching: -project codename “SafeSearch”- an updated to Google’s SafeSearch tool to provide better filtering for certain queries when strict SafeSearch is enabled. -launch codename “Hoengg”-

  • Encrypted search available on new regional domains: Following this update users in the UK, Germany and France can opt in to encrypted search by navigating directly to an SSL version of Google Search on their respective regional domains: https://www.google.co.uk, https://www.google.de andhttps://www.google.fr because Google now offers encrypted search by default on google.com for signed-in users.

  • Faster mobile browsing: -project codename “Skip Redirect”- There is some good news for mobile users, Google’s latest update to mobile version of a websites will allow Smartphone users to bypass all redirects and load the target pages faster -launch codename “old possum”-.

Have you noticed an improvement to your ranking recently that could be a result of these changes? Feel free to share your thoughts below.

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Google Talks About Why It Changes Your TItles In Search Results

01 Feb

Google changes the titles of search results sometimes. This is nothing new, but the company is shedding a bit of light on the process, saying their alternative titles usually improve clickthrough rate. Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Pierre Far writes on …


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Bing Ousts Yahoo! Takes The No 2 Position In December

01 Feb

Bing is the second most popular search engine in the US (finally!), pushing Yahoo! to the third spot. The number one position is held by Google (no surprises there) as revealed by comScores latest figures. At present Bing has a 15.1% market share in the United States, a gradual increase from its humble beginnings in June 2009 with an 8.4 percent market share.

Comscore Bing Yahoo

Bing is in the second position behind Google with 65.9 percent market share in December 2011, while the third place goes to Yahoo! which dropped to the third position on the US. According to comScore, here are the search engines listed by their ranks as well as market share in December 2011:

  • Google with a 65.9 percent share is comfortably on the top with an increase in the market share up from 65.4 percent in November. 12 billion of the total searches were conducted on Google.

  • Bing rose to the second spot with a .1 percent increase from November, to reach at the present 15.1% market share in the United States. 2.7 billion of the total searches were conducted on Bing.

  • Yahoo! takes the third position with a lower share of 14.5 percent as compared to the earlier 15.1 percent. 2.6 billion of the total searches were conducted on Yahoo!.

  • Ask came up 4th again at 2.9 percent market share with a total of 531 million searches.

  • AOL remained at 1.6 percent market share and powered 26.5 percent of searches.

The search numbers have also escalated in the month of December 2011 as 18.2 billion core searches were conducted in December, figure 2% more than the search numbers of November 2011.

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Google’s Doodle Blackened In Protest Of SOPA and PIPA

01 Feb

Yesterday, Google joined Wikipedia and other sites in the protest against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) being debated in Congress. Google has a link on its home page leading people to sign up in the protest against SOPA and PIPA. The link also notifies users of Google’s opposition to controversial antipiracy bills before the Congress.

This is what Google has conveyed to various media houses, “Like many businesses, entrepreneurs, and Web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue Web sites without asking American companies to censor the Internet,” a Google representative said. “So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our U.S. home page.”

Google has also joined the tech firms opposing the two bills currently being discussed in Congress. Google is of the view that web censorship will have a huge negative impact on the US businesses. In protest, Google has covered its logo with a black strip and there is a one line message that goes- Tell Congress: Please dont censor the web!

Googles Doodle Blackened in Protest of SOPA & PIPA

The one liner is an appeal that takes you to an End Piracy, Not Liberty page. The page is a petition form where people can sign up and join the protest against the legislation. People can also share the following message- Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA. The Senate will begin voting on January 24th. Please let them know how you feel. Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.

There is the latest number of people who have already signed the petition. Will this drive by the tech giants affect the Congress decision? Well have to wait and watch.

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Google Search Plus Your World: Marketing Implications

01 Feb

Google launched Search Plus Your World (SPYW) this week (as if you didn’t know), and has sent waves of controversy throughout the media – mostly with regards to competition and relevancy. But what do the changes mean for marketers? Online …


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Google AdWords Expands Automated Rules

01 Feb

…Includes Undo Option! Automated Rules is a time saving feature that allows auto-scheduling of changes to your account, based on user-defined criteria. Based on feedbacks from previous users, Google Adwords, through their official blog, announced that they have made automated rules even more user-friendly and flexible.

To support their cause Google has rung two major improvements, these being:

Increasing the rule limit to 100

Google AdWords Expands Automated Rules, Includes Undo Option

Previously, users were only allowed to set a maximum of 10 automated rules. Now Google, have increased this limit to 100 to ensure that the user is given enough freedom when it comes to trying out new rules.

Undo changes made by automated rules

Google AdWords Expands Automated Rules, Includes Undo Option

Due to flexibility provided, it will be very exciting for users to try out new rules and see how they it works for them. For situations like creation of wrong automated rules or rules not reflecting the change you seek, AdWords have now added an option to undo the change by providing Undo button.

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Now Download Search Queries Data In GWT

01 Feb

Google has provided programmatic access to the search queries data in Webmaster Tools with Python. The Python script for downloading search query data was brought by Google in December 2011 and now has new download options that make the data download highly more useful.

With this open source Python script from the webmaster-tools-downloads project, webmasters can now access their search queries data in CSV format. Google has clarified that the search queries data is not currently available via the Webmaster Tools API, and is being considered for the next API update. Here is the example Google gives as to how the search queries downloader Python script can be used to download search queries data and then upload it to a Google Spreadsheet in Google Docs.

Example usage of the search queries downloader Python script:

  1. If Python is not already installed on your machine, download and install Python.

  2. Download and install the Google Data APIs Python Client Library.

  3. Create a folder and add the downloader.py script to the newly created folder.

  4. Copy the example-create-spreadsheet.py script to the same folder as downloader.py and edit it to replace the example values for website, email and password with valid values for your Webmaster Tools verified site.

  5. Open a Terminal window and run the example-create-spreadsheet.py script by entering “python example-create-spreadsheet.py” at the Terminal window command line: python example-create-spreadsheet.py

  6. Visit Google Docs to see a new spreadsheet containing your search queries data.

TopSearch

Webmasters can set up these scripts to be run daily or monthly and can archive it for longer periods too. With search query chart data downloads, webmasters have access to information not easily available before. While viewing search query data, the chart in the user interface shows impression and click data per day. Prior to this, the detail has only been available if one hovered over a dot in the chart. But now, the detailed chart data available for download provides a greater understanding of the data.

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Going Dark For SOPA Blackout? Here Are Some Tips

01 Feb

As major sites like Wikipedia and reddit prepare for a Wednesday blackout to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate cousin the Protect IP Act, many smaller sites are also debating whether or not they want to participate …


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Punctuation Search Results Upgraded By Google

01 Feb

In a fresh upgrade involving punctuation marks, Google has updated its search results. So, now when you search for a ; as in semicolon, you will now get search results. While some of the results are relevant, some may be not (the search for / slash reveals a music band with the same name on top). Here is what the search for ! reveals:

Google Symbol

This was reported by Google Operating System that Google was showing results for some punctuation symbols, as opposed to earlier, where it did not index them. Now you can see results for symbols/punctuation marks like:

  1. -.– Full Stop

  2. -,– Comma

  3. -:– Colon

  4. -;– Semicolon

  5. -#– Hash

  6. -%– Percent
  7. -@– At

  8. —- Carat

  9. -)– Brackets

  10. -~– Tilde

  11. -|– Vertical Bar

  12. -”– Quotes

  13. -<- Less than/Greater Than

  14. -$ — Dollar symbol
  15. -!– Exclamation Mark

  16. — Apostrophe

  17. -&– Ampersand

  18. - _ — Underscore

  19. —-  Minus sign

  20. -+–  Plus sign
  21. -=–  Equals sign

Do these searches for yourself and see.

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Google Rolls Out New Privacy Policy

01 Feb

Google Inc. has announced through their official blog that they will be changing their current Privacy Policies and Google Terms of Service. These changes will assist Google to link their users across all Google products like Gmail, youtube, Google+ and so on. Google has indicated that the changes will be reflected in just over a month.

In the very words of Google We’re getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google.

Despite trimming policies in 2010, Google says they still have over 70 privacy documents spread across various Google products, making it complicated for users. Google too finds this completely out of sync compared to their vision of integrating various Google products. To get rid of the confusion surrounding the privacy documents, Google now will be consolidating almost 60 privacy policies into one main Privacy policy, leaving a handful policies untouched because of legal and other reasons. These changes will be reflected across all Google platforms by March 1st 2012.

Here’s how the changes will affect you personally, for example if you search for Indian cricket team on Google search. The next time whenever you log onto YouTube, there will be video suggestions of Rahul Dravid or other videos related to Indian cricket. Google will also have the power to customize search queries and ability to make better spelling suggestions.

Though it might seem like a welcoming and logical change for many, apprehension regrading the changes have already raised a few eyes brows around the corner. Individuals are getting worried as they believe their privacy will be attacked with Google now gaining the power to collect data from multiple products, linking them together. For example, user information from Android mobile phones can be retrieved linked with users YouTube/Google+ accounts. According to privacy advocates these changes will give Google enough power to share your personal information on Google+ profile on other Google products, even though you have previously ticked the box that says ‘don’t share’.

Updated Terms of Service and Private Policy is made available, to realise what is being changed here’s the current Google Terms of Service.

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SMX Israel: What You Missed

01 Feb

SMX Israel took place in Jerusalem on Sunday as a one-day event full of keynotes and sessions, led by Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land/Search Engine Roundtable. That’s a long trip for those of us in the states (or for …


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Google Confirms Panda 3.2 Update

01 Feb

In 2012, Google has continued its Panda Update with a Panda 3.2 update rolled out on January 18, 2012 (estimated date of the roll out). Google has revealed to search industry professionals that it has done a data refresh of the Google Panda algorithm with no algorithm changes. Webmasters experiencing ranking changes were discussing this on the WebmasterWorld forum for the past couple of days.

Some sites had lost their rankings while the ones hit earlier were seeing higher SERPs- indicating a data refresh undertaken by Google.

However, now Google has sent out a statement confirming the update in the past week- minor update that was just a data refresh of the Panda update. Google has been quoted, “We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users. This most recent update is one of the over 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year.”

This data refresh has been termed as the Google Panda 3.2, and since Google said this was rolled out about a week or so ago, search experts have estimated the date to be January 18, 2012.

The Panda 3.1 update came in during November 2011. After that Google gave a respite to webmasters over the holidays with an announcement of no Panda updates during holidays.

In the New Year this is the first data refresh/update and has been termed as the Panda 3.2. The Panda Updates Timeline goes back to February 24th 2011, when the Farmer Update was rolled out. The algorithm designed against content and link farms wen international on the 11the of April 2011, when it was rolled for the English sites outside the USA. In the last week of September, the Panda 2.5 was rolled out and there were a number of tweaks made to the algorithm by Google.

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Google’s Algorithm Change: When Too Many Ads Attack

01 Feb

If your site looks like one of those “Post No Bills” wall that’s covered in assorted flyers, ads, and various forms of clutter, there’s a good chance Google’s new algorithm change will result in these ad-covered sites being punished, especially …


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