Google has recently released a new project in their Labs known as Google Follow Finder.  The main purpose of this tool is to help users find more Tweeps to expand their network.

The tool is actually very easy to use.  All you need to do is enter a Twitter username and hit “Search”.  Follow Finder will then display users with similar followers and users that entered username might be interested in following based on “following” and “follower” lists.

And to connect with those displayed is easy.  All one needs to do is click the Follow button, log in, and they will be added.  Follow Finder is taking advantage of the new @anywhere framework recently released by Twitter.  The framework makes the entire tool possible by letting Follow Finder get dynamic information about the entered username.

To check out the tool go to http://www.followfinder.googlelabs.com

The “decision engine” recently posted on their blog that “new stuff” is on the way in the spring.  Bing has been showing a lot of growth in the search engine market.  Even though they are a fair amount behind Google, it is promising to see a competitor doing well and providing a different experience than Google.  This different experience is directly related to the features both that are implemented and new ones that are on the way.

One interesting feature Bing posted about is expanding on the Quick Tabs feature.  Quick Tabs is a way to help Bing users to narrow their search results when trying to complete common tasks.  Refining queries to make a better decision (hence “decision engine”) is what Bing is trying to accomplish with this feature.  Based on comments from Bing’s user experience team, the more Bing is used in search, the more it will learn about what you search for and help you make better, faster decisions in the future.

Bing is also showing promising real-time search results based on Twitter.  Bing is able to grab the most popular topics shared on Twitter and when a user performs a search, Bing uses the information it grabs to show more information to the user rather than just a link.  An example they posted on their blog shows a search for “New York Times” and shows a section of the most popular shared links from NYTimes on Twitter.

Bing Maps is getting some help in the real-time search department as well in the form of Foursquare.  Users using Foursquare will have their check-ins and comments visible to those searching in the Maps section.

Bing posting these updates is very important in terms of SEO.  Seeing that other search engines are heading into the social and real-time search allows SEO programs to shift more weight towards social media and networking to make sure they get noticed not only by network connections but by outside that circle as well.

Recently, a real-time search engine named OneRiot launched a real-time ad service that will automatically refresh based on trends in the social web.  Statistics have shown that the click-through rates of the real-time ads are at four times the normal rate for ads.  So what does this have in store for real-time search results?

As mentioned before in a previous post about social search, a business site’s visibility could be dramatically increased as long as they have a social presence.  Being able to connect to customers and to keep them informed of the business’s information is a major part of social search.

A connection could be made here that if the more people a business could reach through social search, the more people could be seeing that business’s site in real-time search results.  And based on the statistics from real-time ads, those results will possibly have much higher click-through rate than even organic results.

Currently, being seen in the social web world is only good for traffic from those social sites and not so much for SEO.  But based on these facts that are surfacing about real-time and social search results, social web presence could be as equally as important for SEO as link building, depending on the speculation  that many people could be clicking more on the social search results than the original organic results.

On March 9, Google opened the Google Apps Marketplace, where apps can be used with Google Apps and are sold to help businesses and users. Here is the description of the Marketplace from Google:

“The Google Apps Marketplace offers products and services designed for Google users, including installable apps that integrate directly with Google Apps.  Installable apps are easy to use because they include single sign-on, Google’s universal navigation, and some even include features that integrate with your domain’s data.”

Google Market Apps

With the opening of the marketplace, it seems Google is moving further and further towards the cloud and away from the desktop.  This does go with Google’s train of thought, as one of the executives from there recently stated that desktops will be obsolete in 3 years.  Only one questions remains, will there be a competitor that can match what Google is doing?

With Yahoo and Bing recently getting the approval for a sort of merge, one would hope that they could crawl from behind and give Google a run for its money.  But with many different apps being pushed out by Google, it will be very tough for this to happen.  We shall see what the future holds for the search engines.

Google’s social search is beginning to make its appearance on search result pages. Social media sites including Twitter and blogging sites can now be used as a search result depending on how well connected the person who is searching is connected to those sites. For example, if a person searches for something, the usual websites will still show up, but suppose that person’s friend writes a blog about whatever the person searched for. That blog page will be included in the social search results.

For businesses, this could prove to be very useful in order to get their site’s visibility increased. There are some tips that a business should follow when trying to capitalize on social search:

1. Make sure to have as many connections as possible.

Having a lot of connections makes sure that a business’s site will be seen by more people in the social search results.

2. Make it easy for customers to follow through the social networks.

This means having links on a site that will either automatically make them follow the business or go directly to the business’s social media page.

3. Post content on those social media sites for interaction with potential and current customers.

Letting a Facebook page sit there won’t do anything but hurt the business. Businesses should answer any questions that come up and post relevant content to keep the people engaged.

4. All social network info should be included on business cards, signs, and online advertising.

This is important to get future clients involved in the network. That way once they start to follow the business, need a service, and search for it, the business will be a search result, possibly ahead of competition.

Remember, traditional SEO is still important. Users might not understand how to see those social results and therefore would still rely on those organic results. These social search tips are still useful in pulling ahead of local competition.

Google recently released their new product, Google Buzz.  Buzz can be compared to other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.  Here is a video that shows what Buzz is capable of doing.

So what does this mean from a search and marketing perspective for businesses?  Well, most will treat it similar to Facebook and Twitter where they will be sending out business information and updates to consumers.  They will be able to follow their customers and competitors alike, just like in other social media sites.

But it can open up other possibilities that those other sites might not be capable of doing.  The quickness of responses from other people in your network would be much higher than that of Facebook, even though they are both in real time.   Google Buzz is based on Gmail, and if people get involved with Buzz on the business side, they would never leave their email all day, considering that anything posted on Buzz would show up in your inbox if it is important.  Facebook is more of a check and leave type social media.  People there go on every once in a while to check updates, etc, and then leave.

On the search side of things, Buzz may offer more than what can be shown on other media sites.  Buzz updates could be integrated with social search, which can be very important for the business uses of social media.  When a customer does a Google search, and they are connected to a business that is part of their social circle, anything relevant from the business will be shown up near the top of their search results.

It would be interesting to see if this feature would extend outside the first degree of contacts in the customer’s social circle.  For example, if a customer’s friend did the same search, would they see the same results due to the business being two degrees of separation away?  This could open up many possibilities and would make connections in Buzz that much more important for businesses.

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, talks about how Google will rank links coming from Facebook and Twitter.

In the latter part of 2009 both Google and Microsoft struck deals with Twitter almost simultaneously. This gave both search engines the ability to have real-time results for search queries. Microsoft hit the ground running with the deal and immediately released their version of real-time search also announcing that users with more followers will have their tweets ranked higher and those who essentially retweet will have those tweets ranked lower. Google, on the other hand, took its time to release its version of real-time search.

Google integrated real-time search with its traditional SERPs with its sources being a number of social networking sites including Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter of course. Sticking to tradition, Google did not release how they will rank tweets initially. However, in a recent interview with Amit Singhal, who led the development for real-time search for Google, with MIT’s Technology Review reviled one part of Google’s ranking algorithm for tweets.

From what Singhal said in the interview, Google will rank tweets in the same way it ranks web pages. It is, in essence, Google’s PageRank algorithm rewritten for Twitter; replace links with followers and you got its “TweetRank” algorithm. Singhal said that tweets will be ranked based not only on how many followers you have, but also “how reputable those followers are.”

The common practice of using hashtags in tweets may be a bad thing for those trying to rank their tweets. Hashtags are commonly a sign of low quality tweets and will become a part of Google’s spam control strategy. This may, in fact, cause a significant reduction in the usage of hashtags by Twitter users.

Being Google, they did not tell us everything about how they will rank tweets. Keep in mind that Twitter is Google’s only source for real-time search; Facebook, MySpace, and other social network, as well as blogs, will play a big role in real-time search. Though they have not released any official information, it is probable that Google will rank things like Facebook posts in the same way it will for Twitter.

Technorati Tags:
Google, Bing, Twitter, Search Engine Optimization

Google to Rank Tweets by http://thewebsquad.com/wordpress/index.php/2010/01/14/google-to-rank-tweets/ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.technologyreview.com.

A lot of people in business go by the old saying “First impressions are everything”, however, with Google and the other search engines this is completely opposite. With the search engines they base their results on the last time they crawled the web in order to provide the most up to date results to searchers. However, the search engines do not crawl equally, in fact they are very biased on who they crawl and when. In order to get crawled and indexed often you have to earn Google’s trust.

Today, search engines are looking for the latest and greatest to display in its SERPs. This means that classic link building techniques are going to be less effective than they have been in the past. Google is going to start looking for the best, most up to date content to display to its users so site age will come into effect but so will site trust. This keeps brand new start ups from dominating the first page, but also keeps stagnate, out of date sites from clogging up the works as well. This is where the Google cache comes in. The cache is a carbon copy of how your site looked the last time Google visited it, and it will tell you when that was exactly. Google, like any other company, does not like to waste time and resources so it crawls sites only when they need to.

If you have a static website the last crawl date is not that big of deal because you site is not any different now than it was then. If you have a blog or a blog on your main website, then this cache date should be very important to you because it tells you two things. First, it tells you what content Google has indexed for your site, and, second, it tells you how much Google trusts your site. You can figure out your trust rank with Google and other search engines based on how quickly they index and cache your site after publishing new content; the quicker they crawl your site, they better your trust ranking with that search engine. To improve this ranking all you have to do is publish quality, unique content. When you do this Google sees that every time they visit your site it has changed, and will, in a sense, bookmark it for quick indexing every time you publish something. Like everything with search engines (except maybe PPC), this will not happen overnight.

Tech Tags:
SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Google

How to ‘Cache’ Google’s Eye by The Web Squad is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

2010 began with some controversy over a decision by Google to remove local listings that usually appear on top of the organic results for SEO and web designer queries. Many SEOs and web designers alike are bashing Google for making this move saying that it is unfair and favors larger firms. They feel that their hard and honest work has been wasted just because Google does not look kindly upon SEOs.

Some believe the move to fake local results created by large national firms and outsourcing firms in India. However, this is not the first time Google has made a big move to combat spam. Previously, they stopped reading Meta keywords to combat with keyword stuffing along with discontinuing the use of PageRank (at least for the publics’ use) to combat with paid link exchanges.

Some SEOs are actually praising Google for the move stating that map results are largely abused by nation and foreign firms. Others are also saying that since web design and SEO is a national and global industry by nature local results are irrelevant. They also say that the

"web design Las Vegas" vs "web design in Las Vegas"

companies at the top of the listings deserve to be there because they are the best and have the most amounts of clients linking to them.

However, there is a small glint of hope for small firms. SEOs have found (almost immediately after the update took place) that if you type “web design in Las Vegas” rather than “web design Las Vegas” local results appear. This gives smaller, local firms a fighting chance. The only problem is that most searchers have become accustomed to getting local results without having to add “in”, therefore, the keyphrase with the additional word receives considerably less traffic.

The industry was already expecting changes for 2010 starting with Caffeine, but this one definitely took us by surprise. Google shows no signs of changing the listings back to normal anytime soon so we have to assume that this is a permanent move and just deal with it no matter how much we like to complain. Now the question is what will Google change next?

No Local Listings for SEOs and Web Designers? by The Web Squad is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Technorati Tags
Google, SEO, Google Maps