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Tag: Google

  • Google’s Comin’, Yo! Penguin Update Resources You Can Use

    Over the past couple of months, there has been a great deal of hysteria surrounding the unnatural link warnings being sent out in Google Webmaster Tools. These warnings and the release of Google’s Penguin update mean that now is definitely the time to start trying to “act natural” with your link-building methods. While I don’t have any major revelations about this alarming issue, I have been following it rather closely and have some informative posts on the subject to share.

    Google Unnatural Link WarningBarry Schwartz’s article at Search Engine Land was interesting because it contains some insight from a Google spokesperson about the warnings people are receiving in Google Webmaster Tools. The spokesman says rather than it just being the effects of Google going after paid blog/link networks, it is Google choosing to report about these issues more so than in the past.

    Carson Ward’s post on SEOmoz was especially insightful as it was from the point of view of a self-identified reformed link network spammer. This post gives a highly thorough run down of paid blog networks and identifying posts from them, the webmaster tools unnatural link warning and the best way to apply for reinclusion, and basic advice on how to build a more natural link profile going forward.

    Norma Rickman’s post at redmenacemarketing.com has a message of staying calm and chugging along. It goes a bit further in the advice for building a natural link profile by detailing several safer sources of link building. Her ideas on using sources like social bookmarking, Youtube, and guest posting on blogs while maintaining a diverse set of anchor texts are definitely something to take a look at.

    While there are many more great posts out there on this subject, I felt that many of them had too much of an alarmist tone to them. It is true that these warnings are cause for any webmaster to be alarmed but it doesn’t mean that panic and overreacting should occur. The best thing that you can do if you are currently dealing with the unnatural link warning issue is to keep a clear head. Do some research and try to get a broad understanding of the situation and how to tackle it before starting the sky-is-falling routine.

  • Internet Privacy in 2012: It’s Not Easy Being Anon

    internet privacy isn't easy
    A True Anon

    Now that we’re all settled into 2012, we still find ourselves catapulting forward through the Information Age. Some have even classified our current place in time as the Personalization Era [sic]. This is a time wherein the information collected about you online can and does tailor your experience on the Internet to your interests and/or demographic.  Your searches, data collected through your online presence (Facebook and other social networking sites), tweets, and other bits and pieces come together to serve as a pool of data that allows search engines and various sites to do a variety of things to assist or appeal to you. Advertising, personalized search results, product recommendations, etc. are chosen specifically for you! This era, in my experience, has found many divided into two larger groups: the Embracer and the Anon.

    Embracers either know how the system functions and reap the benefits of this custom online experience, or they are completely unaware and simply enjoy their online life with great abandon. Embracers also house the Oversharers.These are the people whose Internet lives can overshadow “IRL” and they thrive on divulging minutia.

    Conversely, Anons are those whose Twitter feeds are penned by pseudonyms that require follow requests to view, their Facebook profiles are well-protected, and you’re not going to find many, if any, lamentable pictures of them from their freshman year of college even if you’re “in” with them online. These are the people who comb through privacy settings, making sure they’re in full control of what is accessible and to whom. Generally, if they have the option, they also opt out of anything that shares their information or uses it for commercial purposes. Included here is also the ultra-paranoid who will usually be on the other end of emails where the subject begins with “FW:Fwd:FW:” and who legitimately believe much of the fear-mongering myths dispelled on Snopes.com.

    internet privacy isn't easy
    Fwd:fwd:FWD:fwd

    So who’s better off in the current era: the Embracer or the Anon?

    The Embracers are certainly going to have plenty to work with for their memoirs. They’re often extremely up-to-date on Internet trends and make online friends far and wide. They often appreciate that their online experience has been tailored to them and utilize this when shopping or discovering new websites, products, or services. On the other hand, over-sharing
    or being unaware of the implications of sharing certain personal data on the web, besides possibly annoying an Anon or two on their friend list, can be risky and lead to dangerous pitfalls like identity theft. Stalking people in the “Personalization Era” certainly seems easier, though! Avid Foursquare users beware: try not to make too many enemies.

    The Anons can and do enjoy their chosen level of privacy. Future employers or those undesirable lurkers will have a hard time pinning any dirt on the Anons based on their online presence. They can even be fully present at and enjoy a party
    without live-tweeting it. Life is getting harder for the Anon, however, thanks to changes in Google’s privacy policy and the trend of moving away from anonymity in many forums.

    The case for and against Internet anonymity has been a subject of discourse more and more recently and, no matter which group you find yourself in, chances are that if you’re reading this, you’ve got an opinion on it. Whether you’re an Embracer, an Anon, or somewhere in between, knowing what you’re sharing and with who is always a good idea.

  • Google Free Europe

    Google France
    LeGoogle

    Google has landed in hot water in France after offering its Google Maps product for free in the country. America is known as the land of the free, and we all know big businesses get to do pretty much whatever they want. The idea of a government stepping in to say a business can’t give away a service for free strikes me as particularly French.

    But while this move may not slow down the Google machine, it could open the door to similar lawsuits as Google sets its sights on new markets in previously un(Google)mapped countries. Could this be the beginning of a real life game of Risk that Google might not want to lose?

    France Fines Google for Flying Free

    French officials allege that the search engine giant is unfairly leveraging its massive size to crush smaller French competitors who offer similar services to paying customers – specifically Bottin Cartographies, who initiated the lawsuit in 2010. A 500,000 Euro fine was leveled against Google as the result of the lawsuit, coupled with an additional 15,000 Euro fine.

    A smaller company — maybe Bottin Cartographies — would take this as a huge and potentially disastrous setback after they sunk an untold sum into digitally mapping a new market, but something tells me Google isn’t losing too much sleep over this. To illustrate how much money Google made in 2010, SEOMoz deconstructed what Google’s reported 2010 earnings of $29.3 billion could buy.

    Let’s just say no one needs that many Justin Bieber albums. Ever.

    Quoi?

    So what’s the big fuss over the relatively small fine?

    Aside from the ongoing anti-trust legislation facing the company in more than half a dozen different jurisdictions, Google has had a relatively straightforward plan of attack since its inception, and charging for services like Google Maps isn’t part of that plan. Generally speaking, Google offers a free service that few can match in quality – search, maps, email – and then sells ads connected to that free service. Advertising is what makes Google’s world turn, and it’s much more difficult to sell ads for a service people have to pay to use than one anyone can access anytime they want to.

    So if this French incident is an indicator of what Google can expect to see as it expands overseas, it could find itself on the slippery slope of charging some users for a service that is free in other parts of the world.

    I guess what it boils down to is this: would you pay for Google Maps? What about anything else Google offers for free?

  • [eBook] Google Plus for Business

    Google Plus for BusinessTake Seven Steps to Social Media Heaven today! 90 million users can’t be wrong: Google+ is the newest and fastest-growing social network, recently opening its doors to small businesses. The multifaceted integration with search, social discussion and sharing, and the rise of a platform for authority has made Google+ a must for any business.

    Using Google Plus for Business

    Want to know how to leverage Google Plus for Business? Download our free eBook now!

    We’ll walk you through:

    • Setting up your Google+ page
    • Designing a compelling targeted profile
    • Sharing meaningful content and interacting with your users
    • Measuring what Google Plus does for your Business
    • Strengthening your site for Google Plus for Business
    • Going beyond social and making a difference in social-search.

    Find out the latest tricks and tips in social media today. Download our eBook to get started.

    What Can a Google Plus For Business Page Do?

    With an engagement rate topping 60%, Google+ is a goldmine of social interaction. Hangouts with your users, highly-targeted circles, and integration with both search and other Google apps makes Google Plus for Business a worthy investment for any small business. But it’s a complex social network, and less intuitive than Twitter and Facebook — make sure you know how to traverse the rapids of this new social network by downloading our Google Plus for Business eBook now!

    A well-tuned Google+ page can be a conduit for discussion, a traffic generator, and a wellspring of highly targeted and engaged website visitors both on and off the social network. Find out today how to focus the energy from Google+ to your business by building your business page and what aspects make effective social media campaigns on Google+.

    Running around in Circles? Confused by it all? Contact Search Influence today to get your Google Plus for Business page running at full steam.

  • My So-Called Zeitgeist

    Google released their annual “Year-End Zeitgeist<” last month, a look back at the most popular search terms of 2011. The corporation defines zeitgeist as “the spirit of the times.” Despite the self-aggrandizing name, the Google Zeitgeist paints a mostly trivial picture of the past year. I hardly know what zeitgeist means. I do know the term lends itself to pretension. It is probably more accurately defined here as the “general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, or political climate … along with the general ambiance, morals, [and] sociocultural direction” of a particular time. Though I hardly know what any of that means either, it sounds measurably less romantic and nebulous than the “spirit of the times.”

    At any rate, the so-called zeitgeist of 2011 revealed itself rather dryly through “the aggregation of billions of queries people typed into Google search.” Instead of ranking the most popular queries by quantity, Google murkily curated the “fastest rising” searches.

    Surprisingly, Google+ was the second fastest rising search of the year. Fair or not, Google+ users have been likened to tumbleweeds passing through a ghost town. That’s good for 2nd most zeitgeisty in the zeitgeist rankings? Smells like heimvorteil (home field advantage).

    Home cooked algorithms aside, Google+ was nonetheless outdone. Rebecca Black was the “fastest rising” search of 2011. The spectacularly untalented teenager reached the pinnacle of online celebrity because of our culture’s virtually endless capacity for schadenfreude and shit flinging – which actually might be the “spirit of the times.”

    The rest of the top 10 fastest rising searches uniformly consisted of death, entertainment, and technology – occasionally intertwined (Battlefield 3, at #5). More or less, these are timeless anxieties, curiosities, and preoccupations. This guy (Steve Jobs, #9) died, and that guy (Ryan Dunn, #3) died. This thing (the iPad2, #10) and that thing (the iPhone 5, #6) will make life easier.

    Just how much can the most popular search terms reveal about our culture as a whole? I would think a lot; but the evidence points to something more marginal.

    The truth is, search engines are inherently commercial – which says a lot for internet marketing, if not much about our erstwhile spirit. For the most part, people use Google to find breaking news or things to buy. Accordingly, the “Zeitgeist” results are minimally insightful, no matter what Google calls them. It requires some major leaps, bounds, and assumptions to glean anything about our “general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, or political climate” from Ryan Dunn dying in a car accident.

    For example, New Orleans has a very clear-cut identity. Looking at the fastest rising searches and terms in the area last year, what stands out about the city? New Orleanians really want the iPhone 5 and some pizza. I guess that bodes well for the papajohns.com iPhone app. The spirit of the city is nowhere to be seen, though.

     While Safesearch is apparently on when amassing the numbers, by trumpeting the year-end peek at search results as our “Zeitgeist,” there is no lack of wanking on Google’s part. Perhaps next year they should title their findings “bedeutungkitsch.”

     

  • Interview with Cracked Columnist John Cheese

    Cracked Columnist John Cheese
    John Cheese talks SEO

    Cracked columnist and longtime internet comedy writer John Cheese put out a call for interviews recently, and I jumped at the chance to talk to him. Out of all the writers on Cracked, a site I have been fairly addicted to since about 2007, John Cheese has probably spent the most time eloquently weaving his own life experiences into his always funny and often moving columns.

    John ended up really driving home a rather simple yet all-encompassing idea that we have adopted as a mantra at Search Influence: fresh content is king. It really doesn’t matter whether you are advertising a novel, a list-based comedy site, or a small business anywhere in the world – if you can produce quality content that people find interesting on a regular basis, everything else will fall into place. It doesn’t hurt if you are as insightful, funny, and talented as John is either.

    Take a look at the results of my email interview with John Cheese:

    (more…)

  • Google’s “Search Plus Your World” Combines Social, Personal, and Personalized Algorithms

    Google's Search Plus Your World ExampleGoogle search results have been getting more and more personalized since the introduction of personal results in 2005, but the search engine giant’s newest feature takes on your entire world.

    The new “Search Plus Your World” feature effectively erases the lines between standard search results, hits from social sites like Google+, search results that have been shaped by your personal search history, and results that are targeted at you personally.

    Sound to you like Google is tightening its grip on your online life? You may not be entirely wrong. This update, while ostensibly making strides to personalize your entire interaction with what is still essentially a massive online question and answer service, collapses most of the walls that have always existed between social media and the wilds of the internet.

    But only for you, apparently.

    The Google You See

    Search Plus Your World draws from not only the internet in general, but also from the pool of private online information that you or your friends have shared. So if someone in one of your Google+ Circles shares a picture of you, say, wearing an oversized sombrero, that image is likely to pop up in your search results the next time you search for “Cinco de Mayo.”

    Why? Because that picture is tied to you on Google+. It doesn’t even matter if that picture is only shared on a limited basis to five members of your circle – it may still show up in your search and the search results of anyone else you are connected to online.

    But here’s the really important part that may or may not help Google skirt what appear to be serious issues with sharing personal data: just because you and the people you have connections with see that picture doesn’t mean that it has been shared globally online.

    Now, that may come as cold comfort to someone whose boss is in one of their Google+ Circles if the boss just found out that the sombrero wearing employee wasn’t really sick with the flu on May 5th  and 6th, but the fact is that the picture will remain shared on a limited basis, as its settings on Google+ stipulate.

    So you may end up sharing more than you wanted to, but only to people you are connected to online. And none of us have Google+ or Facebook friends we’ve never met, right? We certainly all know every one of our Twitter followers, right? Right?

    But SEO Personalization is still a Good Thing

    Potential party related privacy issues aside, this update still represents a leap forward in personalizing your Internet experience. When you asked Jeeves for the name of a bicycle shop in 1998, he didn’t know or care that you were in New Orleans and not New York, at least not to the extent that Google does now.

    I’d argue that most of the advances Google has made in the realm of personalized searching have faded into the background rather than sparking outrage in the average user. Seriously, when is the last time you have given up a Google search in exasperation because 30 minutes of searching resulted in exactly zero relevant results? Five years ago? Ten?

    So while things that you have shared with friends may start popping up in what promises to be the next generation of ultra-personalized search results from Google, you are also more likely than ever before to find relevant information from every search.

    Just don’t take pictures while wearing silly hats and drinking tequila. And if you do, don’t post them online. You never know who in your circle may be looking.

  • Improvements to Google+ Brand Pages

    Yesterday, Google announced three much-called-for improvements to Google+ Brand Pages. After receiving a lot of feedback over the last few weeks, the Pages Engineers have added some new features that should be received well among the G+ Pages community. Apparently, they really do care what we think!

    • Multi-Admin support! – Brand Pages can now delegate up to 50 people as page managers or administrators. These administrators can make updates and posts to the page from their own accounts.  Adding managers is easy. While logged in as the Google+ Page, click ‘Google+ settings’ in the Google bar and select managers. Here, you can add managers by email address.
    • Streamlined notifications – When logged is as a Google+ Page, notifications now work as expected in the Google bar. Multiple managers are now involved in all activity that takes place on the page, and can be sure to keep up with the conversation.
    • Aggregate count of engaged users – Now, when a user looks at a Google+ Page, they will see a number representative of all +1s and followers. This number provides more clarity and reflects all users who have interacted with the page, as opposed to only those who’ve added the page to their Circles.

    Unfortunately, the changes are rolling out gradually, so we haven’t seen the pages on our own G+ Page yet. It’s unclear how long the rollout will take, but check out these and other improvements to Google+ Pages and Profiles here, all debuting this week. As always, we’ll keep you posted with news and developments. Happy holidays!

  • Google Evolution Video: The Past, Present and Future of Search

    As a followup to their recently-released peek under the hood, the Google team has produced this video showing the remarkable evolution of their search service. Watch the once-humble engine (check out that MS Word Art logo!) exploding in under fifteen years from plain-text results with a month or more’s lag time between indexes to the omnipresent, light-speed information giant we all know and love today. Since its inception as a tool for data-gathering, Google has taken a keen emphasis on speed of results, with the end goal being an almost “seamless” meld between the user’s query and the answer to such; they’ve also expanded in other dimensions, covering new paradigms such as images, breaking news, and semantic results to help users navigate to the information they’re seeking as efficiently as possible.

    Google has evolved to an almost unthinkable degree of complexity in such a short time — and advances are coming at a breakneck pace, particularly with the social and business opportunities afforded by the introduction of G+. What do you think is next for Google and us?

  • Guest Post & Infographic: 6 Ways You Can Use Google+ to Build Authority

    Kaila Strong is an Account Manager at Vertical Measures.

    Infographic: The Authority Building Machine
    Internet Marketing Infographic by Vertical Measures

    Knowing how to build website authority is essential both in terms of increasing traffic and maximizing sales. With the emerging popularity of Google+, just about anyone with a Google profile can utilize the platform to help with building awareness for their website or brand. In addition, with the evolution of Google Pages you can also help build the authority of your website and connect with your customers too!

    Here are just a few ways you can use Google + to build your websites authority and connect on the platform.

    Google+ Button

    Haven’t added the Google+ button to your site yet? Do it! The social network is growing in popularity and should be around for a little while – at least we hope. Allow your site visitors to +1 your content such as blog posts, video, white papers, and even your products. Anywhere you think someone might want to give you props via +1 you should place a button.

    Additionally, use Google+ to start sharing your content with like-minded folks. Build up your circles and share your posts to get +1’s too. Share others content and ask others to share yours. Google has access to this information and can see if you naturally receive +1’s on good content. Worth mentioning, many are saying that a +1 on content can get it indexed and cached by the search engine giant much faster.

    Google Pages

    The announcement that Google now allows businesses to have Google+ pages certainly thrilled many around the web. Share breaking news, updates, promotions, links, photos, and even talk face-to-face with your customers via Google+ Hangouts just like you would do with your personal profile.

    First, build your Google+ page and fill out all the important areas. Add photos, video, and fill out the About section. Add a link to your website (do-follow!), and update your status messages regularly. Add profiles to your circle and encourage others to add you to their circle. Add a Google+ Page badge to your site with a link to your profile. Monitor how well your Page is doing through the use of Google Analytics and Google+ search.

    Engage

    Continue to engage on your Google+ business Page and from your personal profile as well. You might even go so far as making it a company policy to get all employees on Google+ by the end of the year. Encourage your staff to participate on your branded page and with others in your industry to connect with new people. Building up a community on social platforms isn’t an easy task, but with the help of your staff you can do so collectively. You’ll find that over time your community will naturally share your content, +1 your posts, and help increase the authority of your website all at the same time.

    As Google + matures and grows in popularity so will the ability you have as marketers to drive engagement and authority for your brand. See how Google + fits into the building authority process? The infographic below shows you just how important diversifying efforts are to building authority.

    Examining Ripples

    One interesting feature of Google+ are Ripples. “Google+ Ripples creates an interactive graphic of the public shares of any public post on Google+ to show you how a post has rippled through the network.” You’re able to see who publicly shared the post, the comments they’ve made, how the post was shared over time, and statistics on how the post was shared. Use Ripples to examine the who, what, where, when, and why of viral posts. Attempt to emulate the messages that receive the most engagement. Here’s a list of 10 amazing Google+ Ripples to get started.

    Extending Network

    Use Google+ to extend your network. Sure, not all your friends and connections will be on Google+ but quite a few of them will be – especially those “in the know”. Look to connect with others through the use of Huddles or examine Ripples to see who the influencers are within Google+. Add those folks to your circles and reach out to them, working to add them to your inner circle.  Build up your brands authority by being connected with these folks, or your own authority for being in their circles.

    Optimize Page

    Don’t forget to optimize your profile and business page. The meta description of your business page is your intro, headline, and name, so make sure to fill them in appropriately. Optimize your Google+ personal profile too with these easy-to-follow tips.

    These are just a few ways to utilize Google+ to your advantage and work to build authority. As you can see in the Infographic below, using Google+ is just one of the ways you can build authority.