Google Search+ – You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink
Its a strange use of the above idiom however I have to say it was one of the first things that came into my head having now had the ‘pleasure’ of Google’s new expanded social functionality within the new mainstream Google search results pages. One may suggest I am averse to change, however this couldn’t be further from the truth. For most SEO’s change has become part of the job description, as Google tweak, change, test to ‘give users the best experience’ – and for many of us it forms part of our wider night time activities (I know what your thinking) in terms of various affiliate and business ventures many SEO’s have behind the scenes.
Change is something in particular, SEO’s have had their fair share of over the last six months or so – and certainly the changes announced by Google yesterday are comparable to many of the earlier changes announced by Google during that period. The integration of features such as more personalised results, the integration of personalised images could have a profound effect on how users interact with their search engine.
Further more the people and pages functionality provides a greater level of detail and personalisation into my search results, as Google integrates the wisdom of the crowds into my personalised web experience.
There is one big problem with much of this most recent rollout and that is the with the degree to which personalisation is beginning to impact on the entire search experience. One can see what Google are trying to do here, and I can see the logic in doing so however much like many of their other recent tweaks and changes it comes with a degree of cynacism attached. Strange again that we see a product rolled out yet again which significantly favours Google real estate above and beyond that of many other real estate (not going to get into the subject of co-incidence, correlation etc here) but much of this does appear to favour their inventory in the search engines. Further to that, the fact much of this new advancements come as standard, and one actually has to turn this off to get a non personalised experience.
This has one significant drawback, it relies on on engaged Google+ audience to work – however in my eyes it shares many similarities to the days where Microsoft Windows defaulted to Internet Explorer as standard and where Windows came on the majority of PC’s out there. Microsoft pushing Microsoft and the similarities to those days appear to be there for all to see. Its going to be interesting to see as with Microsoft whether we see any impact from bodies like the FTC as to privacy or antitrust concerns – however certainly I would be surprised in the short term as to whether we will see anything of that scale of here (though be interesting to see how the Germans and US deal with this.)
The fact it needs Google+ to be effective could work too fold. This does feel more like a direct shot across the bows at Facebook. A real big shot aimed at stealing userbase away from the social monster that is Facebook. This could be an absolute masterstroke from Google, it could also be a significant flop and one which may have significant repurcutions. We can only wait and see on that one. With that in mind, we come back to the idiom above. Google appear to be throwing significant weight behind Google+ now – and more closely tying it into their primary commercial vehicle. However until Google really break that social vehicle and give me a reason to want to engage socially much as Facebook have done I still feel the real attraction to move away from Facebook isn’t there for one to change and as such may still leave this as underutilised. We will see…
Where I do feel Google could get real traction on this is if there was more impartiality. Twitter have already been vocal regarding their concerns on the rollout as is, and I would be surprised if we didn’t hear more from Facebook at some point. Integrating true wisdom of the crowds into such a personalised rollout would really throw credibility to this and create a more rounded perspective of peoples behaviours, likes and dislikes.
After all, my Google+ activity is certainly not a reflection on my personal character and thus this links me to possibly the biggest issue of all. The success of this personalisation is very much dependant on an all in approach. That is me making Google ‘the center of my universe’ and sharing with it all aspects of my likes and dislikes. To do that as I said before they need to break that social barrier – as otherwise it will be nothing more than what I suspect it is now…
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2012 – The year the social graph takes shape
2011 was certainly an interesting year for SEO. We saw a number of things impacting our SEO world, from the introduction of the Panda updates, to the removal of keyword data on SSL based searches. 2012 promises to be just as interesting a year, and we have already had SEO drama despite it being early days with Google appearing to fall foul of their own human assessment (call me a cynic but that smells of pure Google propoganda – however thats another post)
I asked a number of fellow SEOs about how they saw SEO in 2012, where they saw the growth areas for this year, and whether they thought 2012 would be the year of Google + – with some surprising responses.
1) 2011 saw a number of significant changes to the Google interface, as well as the continued expansion of Google into vertical specific search products. What do you think 2012 holds and what will we see the the search engines doing during this year.
Bas Van Den Beld (State of Search):
Looking into the future is difficult. I don’t think many people expected that many changes in 2011. But my gut feeling is that in 2012 that will only be even more. Google is moving swiftly towards a more social experience which will mean even further changes to the interface, though maybe not as major as in 2011. But tweaks, more verticals and maybe even more surprising products are without a doubt coming in 2012.
Nick Garner (Unibet)
I have a preamble to this answer….When I look at what Google is going to do I reference people like Arron Wall. He has always looked at where the money is and worked his way back from there. Essentially as I see it, there is a relationship between how far you go to monetize something and how much users will put up with the disruption and unpleasantness of their experience before they go elsewhere.
When Google ‘turn the screw’ they don’t need to shift the needle much to have a massive effect on their revenues. Things like increasingly integrating their own properties into search results, query deserves freshness where commercial sites are pushed out in favour of news sites, on ads; using a yellow background on the top of page and then making that yellow so transparent many monitors don’t even pick it up any longer, leading to more mistaken clicks than ever before, using search suggest to corral users around certain phrases and thus intensify the ad auctions…it goes on.
So what do i see for 2012? more of the same from Google, but probably a bigger emphasis on adding ,more +1 results into the SERPS, possibly even removing the yellow background on the top of the page ads and pushing the informational and commercial search results even further apart.
The problem for users is that there’s such a massive ‘brand halo’ around Google now, they can get away with poor search results because most Google users wont even try Bing. This point is brought home by the recent results from ‘Blind search taste test’ ( http://blindsearch.fejus.com/ where Bing is now the preferred search engine. But you don’t hear users complain of the rising commercial tide. So expect to see a worsening search engine for 2012.
PS Bing is now my default search engine! – because it’s better!
Kevin Gibbons (SEOptimise)
Good question and I wish I knew – but reading into Google’s recent algorithm changes and social integration has to be highest on the agenda. For example, having trusted authors with linked Google+ profiles is likely to become a strong ranking factor for blogs and news sites, plus I’d expect to see more in the way of freshness/real-time updates as Google will be aware of the treat social search, Twitter in particularly, brings for breaking news queries or finding more trusted results from your social circle.
Justin Parks (SEO Dojo)
Aside from messing up the results and doing everyones head in with confounded and eratic personal search results the biggest looming change is still going to be the integration of g+ and the social profiling aspect, hence, more personal search results madness. Also, brand search will most likely become more refined and accurate as the year progresses.
I think Google will continue developing (and bloody changing) the various different results and interfaces that have been proven (like video and local) and terminate any of its less used or useful tools.
2) What do you think is the biggest challenge facing SEO’s during 2012 and why?
Bas Van Den Beld (State of Search):
The biggest challenge will continue to be: integration. Making sure as an SEO that everything integrates: social, search, paid, organic, but also offline. Integration will be very important. Many SEOs who do ‘on site’ work will also be working more on the rich snippet area.
Nick Garner (Unibet)
Google+1 results in the SERPS. Winning Plus1 votes is not an SEO thing, so our community will have some challenges because you can’t go to a vote seller and buy 10,000 real votes from real people who you actually might want to business with. 2nd is Google’s ever decreasing reliance on manipulable links. Lessening reliance these links = a tough time for SEO’ers who have relied on their link buyer friends and posting links on Directories/PR distribution sites. In other words the makeup of links is changing.
Kevin Gibbons (SEOptimise)
In my opinion, although panda was a massive update for SEOs in 2011, the most significant changes in 2011 are yet to have a full impact. Most importantly, these are social integration and roll out of SSL Search – with the ICO cookie compliance directive potentially being far more harmful to analytics and the way we measure search than anything we have seen so far during the last 12 months.
Justin Parks (SEO Dojo)
Personal search is already causing headaches for me as its not a matter of looking at a universal result anymore and assuming that this is the most likely or natural results set a visitor will. My challange is bringing together all of these marketing channels and focusing them into a benefical seo result.
Actually, I’m begining to isolate these aspects and even on occasion ignore the seo impact altogether as it has become to difficult to translate the data. Its simply to fuzzy to accuratly guage and much better to allow elements to do “their thing”. It simply means I take a much broader view of SEO than before.
3) Will Google+ make the breakthrough in 2012?2) What do you think is the biggest challenge facing SEO’s during 2012 and why?
Bas Van Den Beld (State of Search):
Depends on how you look at it: as a Facebook competitor: no. As the ‘center’ of Google products and as how we can see everything connected through Google+: yes. But it is very important to look at Google+ as not just that next Social Network. It is so much more.
Nick Garner (Unibet)
Google have always asserted that the whole of the internet is a social graph. If they can socially ‘link up’ even a small amount of it whilst remaining THE place to go when doing a commercial search, then its a win for Google. Remember, Google know that bribing website owners with traffic from Plus1 sources means they will comply and thus be a lever for Google. As webmasters know, a facebook ‘like’ doesn’t really bring in commercial traffic. Users don’t go to Facebook to buy stuff, they go there as a brand touch/connection point. So with this in mind, Google will prevail in the end, only because it’s where the money and fresh traffic comes from. In short, it won’t be a breakthrough. It will be a gradual rising of the tide over the next 3 years.
Kevin Gibbons (SEOptimise)
They’ve clearly got a huge task ahead of them in terms of really making a mark in social. Despite stagerring user growth figures, Google+ is still a huge way behind Twitter and Facebook. Plus it hasn’t quite got that stickability factor yet that makes you want to log in and post every day.
That being said, social has been big on Google’s agenda for a long time now – and with Google+ they finally seem to be getting somewhere. At least in comparison to their previous attempts. Also with the roll out of social integration into search results (via +1 votes, author profiles etc) they’re tapping into an audience of billions so stand every chance of making a huge push next year.
Justin Parks (SEO Dojo)
Ha! I know google want it to and the signups and “users” figures are being bounced about if it suits google to announce them but im still dubious about the actual effect of google plus on the average user who google really want. Facebook still wins that battle and continues to win the war in that respect. I think g+ will continue to carve put its own little niche but, unless something particularly dramatic occurs (like FB gets destroyed by some privacy issue for example) then it will temain niche rather than mainstream.
This on itself worries me as I believe google are committed to making g+ a fundamental part of search and thus personal search results and I dont believe that this is realistic based on the users, useage and uptake we are currently seeing.
So then, no, I dont think google plus will make its breakthrough this year. Maybe 13 will be its lucky number.
My thanks must go out to Nick Garner, Bas van den Beld, Kevin Gibbons and Justin Parks for helping out.
Google+ – Come a long way but still a long way to go
I’ll be honest, I do try and keep much of what I write on this site UK centric, however I came across this data from Comscore which I found particularly interesting and certainly worth covering in light of recent statistics concerning the continued ‘growth’ of Google+.
Of particular note were the following
-Google+ is only the seventh largest social network behind Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace and Tumblr with around 15 Million Unique US visitors per month. The Facebook figure was almost 10 times that number.
- Google+ saw the least user engagement out of all of the main social networks with average minutes per visitor of only 5 minutes. In contrast Facebook visitors spent an average of 6.6 hours on that site (up 37% YOY) with Tumblr and Pinterest coming in behind.
- Tumblr has seen growth of around 131% in 2011. The majority of this growth has taken place post April 11 2011 and unlike Google+ much of this traffic appears to be highly engaged.
It should be noted the Comscore data does not include any data from the Google+ toolbar or its distributed network – however this would at least put some of the growth figures outlined in context of the wider industry. I would also add I would expect the UK figures to be reasonably different to those outlined above, given the greater cut through of Google throughout the UK and Western Europe.
Picasa and Feedburner biggests threats for extinction in 2012
We ran a poll for the last couple of months or so asking people in the industry about which Google product they thought would be pulled next. The poll itself was developed following the announcement of the demise of Sidewiki – and a number of options were provided including
- Google +
- Feedburner
- Picasa
- Google Reader
- Google sites and others
Nearly half of respondants voted for two of the products namely that off Feedburner and Picasa with Google + following behind however I should add a number of those votes came before the announcement of the new business features for Google+.
Agree with the poll or will we see bigger changes in the wider field?
Merry Christmas from Holistic Search
Its nearing the end of another year, and its been an interesting one both personally and for the blog itself -and to be honest I am looking forward to 2012 with renewed vigour. We have a number of big plans for the site to move it forward and I really look forward to bringing these to fruition in Q1 next year.
So from me – Merry Christmas to everyone from myself and Holistic Search and see you in 2012.
Hotel Comparison ads – more vertical search cut through
Its amazing watching how Google is evolving their presence across the search engine landscape. Yesterday we saw Bas’ post on State of Search regarding the continuing takeover of the SERPs with Google+ results, and at the same time we saw the introduction of the Google Comparison ads across the pond on many hotel based search queries.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google’s usage of these comparison ads is nothing new, we have seen similar products roll out here in the UK for secured loans for example for a couple of years, and more recently Google have taken advantage of the ITA purchase through the rollout of the flight search functionality. There have also been examples of further seperate vertical specific rollouts such as boutique.com over the course of the 12 months, in what appears to be a wider plan to dominate vertical aggregated search as well as the main piece itself dealing often with end users rather than middle men as much of the recent acquisitions have suggested (I would suggest we are not far away from seeing similar forays into Insurance (Beat that Quote) and Real Estate at some point in the very near future.
The hotels extention is however a sort of natural progression of what they have been doing less obviously over recent months. Many people would have noticed the more prominent maps on hotel centric queries, and further to that the categorisation of many of these hotels underneath (see below).
The new comparison ads would appear to merely make this more prominent within relevant searches, offering Google valuable real estate on the page in which to further monetize applicable searches.
As I have said before, I doubt this is the least time we will see Google monetize vertical search. Whether or not advertisers beat a path to their door is open to debate however the continued strategy would appear to be here to stay
Debunking Google’s Propaganda
Experienced SEOs know that there’s a huge difference between what Google and its fans declare to be ‘SEO best practices’ and what actually works to get sites to rank.
For those who are still struggling to make sense of this, below I’ve outlined a few SEO myths propagated by the likes of Matt Cutts and his adoring fanbase, and compared that to the real truth of the matter.
Paid Links
Probably the greatest myth in SEO is that buying links – paying a website money to place a link to your website – is a horrendously bad SEO practice and will get your site banned from Google’s SERPs.
The truth is, of course, that paid links are a massive grey area to begin with. Paying for inclusion in an online business directory is, for all intents and purposes, a paid link. Yet you’ll never get penalised for that. Also, many newspapers give extra column space and links to big advertisers, as part of their ongoing patronage. These are essentially paid links, yet you’ll be very hard-pressed to see any site penalised for engaging in such activities.
In fact, Google is so bad at detecting and acting upon paid links, that in some cases it takes enormous mainstream media attention for them to do anything about it. The JC Penney affair was one such case, and while it resulted in a temporary penalty for the site, it didn’t last very long.
So buying links – if you’re being smart about it – is a perfectly valid and relatively low-risk linkbuilding tactic.
- Google Says: Don’t buy links.
- The Truth: paid links work and are very hard to detect.
- What you should do: if you’re in a competitive industry, go for it.
Great Content
Google has been brainwashing encouraging webmasters to produce what they vaguely define as ‘great content’ for years. In fact dare you to find a Google Webmaster video produced in the past year here Matt Cutts does not utter the words ‘great content’.
So what is this ‘great content’ they speak of? Nobody really knows. The good news is, you shouldn’t worry too much about it, because ‘great content’ is just a load of bollocks.
The truth is that Google’s ranking algorithm leans heavily on links. You don’t need great content, you just need a shedload of links to rank for any given term. Links rule Google’s SERPs, and while the big G has been trying to wean themselves off of the link juice for years, so far they’ve been thoroughly unsuccessful.
Sure, having solid content on your site helps – you’d be a fool to build your SEO strategy purely on links alone – but chasing after that ‘great content’ hullabaloo is a pretty pointless exercise. Always deliver what your visitors want, but don’t go chasing after Google’s windmills. Focus on what works.
- Google Says: Publish great content
- The Truth: Nobody knows what great content is, and it doesn’t matter that much anyway
- What you should do: Don’t skip over your on-site optimisation and do make an effort on generating good content, but don’t go chasing after it to the detriment of more effective activities. Like linkbuilding.
Cheating
Google has been trying to discourage SEO methods it considers ‘cheating’ for almost as long as it has existed. There are a lot of tactics that can be considered cheating, including (but not limited to) cloaking, doorway pages, scraping other people’s content, link networks, and more of such fun.
The truth is, those types of activities are still widely used today because – you guessed it – they still work. Search engines are getting much better at detecting these and penalising sites accordingly, but overall it’s a running battle of search engines versus smart coders. My money is on the coders, because every time Google finds a cure for a specific tactic and burns a couple of sites, the coders just move on and try new approaches.
If your goal is to build a sustainably profitable website, such cheating tactics are probably not the best approach. But if you’re not too worried about losing the occasional website and are fine with the burn & churn approach to making money online, cheating works.
(Note how I avoided using any parlance involving colours and hats. That’s deliberate, because that whole shtick is sooo 2005.)
- Google Says: Don’t cheat
- The Truth: Cheating works – albeit often temporarily
- What you should do: Don’t cheat if you’re building a long-term business. But if you’re OK with disposable websites, by all means go for it. Just don’t break the law, m’kay?
Barry Adams is a seasoned SEO pro whose experience includes consulting for dozens of SMEs, and in-house SEO work for two massive multinational corporations and a large regional newspaper. Currently he’s the Senior SEO guy at Pierce Communications in Belfast, where he deploys his skills in aid of some of the Emerald Isle’s biggest brands.
Top 3 tips for advertising in mobile search
Advertising in mobile search (sometimes called mobile paid search) is similar to traditional paid search where you, the advertiser, pay when your ad is clicked.
This is where the similarities end, however, as the mobile search user is a different animal to the desktop one, especially when it comes to their intent, the keywords they use and how you can target them.
Let’s have a closer look.
1. Be brief
Perhaps it goes without saying that mobile users’ attention spans are less than the average desktop user. What this really means for you as the advertiser is that you need to keep your ad copy brief, to the point and focussed on shorter keyword groups.
The search ad networks generally have good guidance on their sites for best-practices, so it pays to read up on what they recommend.
While keeping it brief is a real challenge, you’ll still need to tell customers what they need to do to act on your offer.
2. Include your contact
Including a number (for click-to-call advertising) and either your web address or physical address is necessary because mobile users generally want to act as soon they find something they are looking for.
Google offers ‘click-to-call’ mobile ads via its AdWords network. This means that a restaurant using mobile search advertising can include a phone number for searchers to call to make dinner reservations or order take-away. The advertiser pays Google when their ad number is called.
3. Understand what keywords mobile users are more likely to use
It’s a good idea to set up and use a separate campaign for your mobile search advertising, so that you can better segment and adapt your messages.
Mobile users search with shorter queries than they do on the desktop, so using a keyword research tool such as Google’s AdWord keyword tool will help you select better keywords and keyword groups for your mobile audience. Use the ‘Advanced Options and Filters’ area to Show Ideas and Statistics for mobile devices. You can even choose to show only WAP devices, or only full-browser capable phones.
When using mobile, people also tend to consume their information quickly, so advertising products and services that require little consideration will do better than those that need longer consideration cycles. (Think downloading a ringtone vs buying a new dishwasher.)
Popular mobile categories tend to be things like sports, news, ringtones, wallpapers, local food and entertainment listings, and watching videos.
Build your keyword strategy around immediate actions: downloading something, getting a discount code, ordering a meal, or quickly buying tickets.
Bonus: Targeting options
Google and the other search engines allow you to customise your target audience, including by device type (iPhone, Android), mobile network, and even by WAP-enabled phones for those devices that aren’t smartphones. This allows you to target the kinds of products and offers you have to specific segments of your audience. If you’re an app developer, you can advertise Android apps only to the Android users.
Advertising in mobile search is a powerful way to reach out to your mobile audience segment and enables you to offer specific products or services to very specific people no matter where they are.
About the Author:
Pavel Webb is the affiliate manager at TextMagic, a bulk SMS gateway based in United Kingdom.
Google testing email subscription in SERPS
It would appear the evolution of the Google Serps into the conversion funnel continues unabated with recent posts suggesting Google are now trialling email subscription options within Adwords – as long as your logged into Gmail
Source: EuBlog
This in-ad subscription option allows organisations to capture an email address opt-in without the person subscribing on the site itself. A Privacy link is placed next to the ‘Subscribe to newsletter’ option to allow people to view what will happen with their data.
As far this has only been seen with the Honda ads, however one would suggest we will see more of this moving forward. Whats your thoughts good or bad?
The Google Evolution of Search
Google have just released the ‘Evolution of Search’ video, a fascinating six minute overview of the history of Google. With excerts from Marissa Meyer, Ben Gomes and Amrit Singhal it features some of the big hitters from within Google. Whilst watching it you realise just how far Google has come in what in real terms is a very small period of time, and from very humble (by modern comparisons) beginnings has evolved into one of the most complex information retrieval systems in the world.
Where Google go moving forward is open to debate – social and mobile would certainly feature high on the list of potential target sectors – as does aggregation if recent flight news is anything to go by. However there is no doubt the evolution will continue, whether developed internally or via the acquisition of smaller entities. If organisations are to compete with Google – one has to suggest that they have a lot of work to do, not just to match the sheer innovation within Google but also the quest to further develop and grow themselves.
