Recently, at the Facebook F8 conference, it was announced that Facebook would be releasing a new social media “plug-in” called the Open Graph and will release protocol in order for websites to become integrated into the social graph. Including the Open Graph protocol in a website will allow users to “Like” the page which will then be processed by Facebook and be included in the user’s profile and activity/news feed.
Open Graph is designed for websites that represent profiles of real-life objects, like sports teams, restaurants, celebrities, and movies. Once a website becomes a node in the Open Graph, users will be able to link to it, which will then be shared with the user’s friends. Those connections will be very important as the page will now be shown all around Facebook, in a rich content, not just plain text. These connections are similar to how Facebook pages work now. The main difference is that following the connection will lead the user outside of Facebook, and not be constricted like Facebook pages on content.
Open Graph has only just been released and may change. For more information visit here.
In order to communicate effectively to all of one’s social networking friends, one would need to have a profile on each social site and then post to each one of those separately. One would also have to check each profile separately to get any answers, questions, or comments at each site. This process is very time-consuming and keeping track of every site is a nightmare.
Ideas have come up about decentralizing social networks. Technology has already surfaced to do this; it is called Salmon. What Salmon does is rather simple. Suppose Facebook and Twitter implemented Salmon. If person A posts a tweet on Twitter, person B could respond to it from Facebook, without even having a Twitter account. Person A could then respond to that post from Twitter and person B would see it in their Facebook. The same decentralization process happened to email. Everyone has email accounts on different sites like Gmail or Hotmail. Person A can send an email from a Gmail account to person B with a Hotmail account without person A having to worry about having a Hotmail account.
What could this mean for the future of businesses in social networking? First, it would increase the ease of communication between itself and clients/customers. However, a business would still have to have an account in order to have a tangible presence on each social networking site. Salmon just makes it easier to contact people on all of them, without having to worry about signing into a different account every time. This increase in communication could lead to a better following and even better conversion rates as people would see the company has a strong presence in the social media world.
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.
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.
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.
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Google, SEO, Google Maps
Recently, at the Facebook F8 conference, it was announced that Facebook would be releasing a new social media “plug-in” called the Open Graph and will release protocol in order for websites to become integrated into the social graph. Including the Open Graph protocol in a website will allow users to “Like” the page which will then be processed by Facebook and be included in the user’s profile and activity/news feed.