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What’s happened to Google’s ‘Organic Listings’ with Local Search?

It’s been hard not to notice the steps that Google has been taking over the past few months as it’s ramped up its local search listings which in some cases now display 7 local results. Even if you are really bad at maths, this tells you there are only 3 spaces left for your hard earned organic listings.

So what’s going on here…? Is Google really moving away from being an innovative tech giant, pioneering its way through search? Is SEO dead in the water? Is Google really becoming just another platform, shoving paid-for advertisements down your throat? Has Google stopped doing what they set out to do – returning highly relevant results to it users in place of throwing the highest biding advert? Will we move to Bing? It’s a possibility, as if you have used Bing recently then you already know it’s really come on leaps and bounds and now resembles the Google I loved a couple of years back.

There’s a lot of questions to answer, but this is what I find myself asking each time Google tweaks its listings.

Google has been gearing up to this for a while; it’s only natural that the likes of Bing catch up slowly. Think about it, Google is getting inundated with approx. 20 million pages per day. With the ‘old’ Goole it was just impossible for them to keep up the influx, so they set about making moves to help them deal with it.

The May Day update was about getting rid of anything they saw as junk, freeing up space. The Caffeine update a couple of years back was about them building a bigger, stronger, faster Google to keep up with all the new sites, so webmasters in-turn tuned their sites to perform faster. Google Instant had them trying to increase the relevancy of searches and now we have places taking the limelight – which in essence gets back to what Google set out to do – it returns relevant results.

After all, what could be more relevant to a user that searches for ‘Personal Injury Solicitor’ than returning a result that offers 7 personal injury solicitors located around the corner from your house? True, this may make SEO a little more difficult, but SEO is not dead, it’s just changing as it’s always done. Google is not finished, it’s just evolving as it’s always done. Results are not changing; they are just becoming more relevant, as they have always done. And Bing? It’s playing catch up, just like it’s always done.

Published On: March 22nd, 2012 by Paul, Tags: , , ,
Posted in SEO, Whiteboard | Comments Off

March is fast approaching, so is the new Google Privacy Policy.

Fewer than one in eight Google users have taken the time to read the internet giant’s new privacy policy, a poll found recently.
The majority of us are in the dark about the way the web’s most popular search engine operator will use information about what we search for and what we do on-line. The findings came amid deepening concerns about the abuse of private information by internet companies.

When the new policy comes into effect on March 1, information from most Google products will be treated as a single collection of data, which the company could use for targeted advertising.

By consolidating numerous product-specific privacy policies into one comprehensive policy, “we’re explaining our privacy commitments to users of those products in 85% fewer words,” said Pablo Chavez, Google’s director of public policy, on the company’s public policy blog.

Even though the new policy doesn’t change how Google operates, lawmakers are using it as a springboard into an inquiry over user privacy. After all, most web based companies state they may change their privacy policies from time to time and so we know companies do this kind of stuff – credit card companies send notices in the post, banks email you change their changes to terms of agreement all the time to inform their customers that new policies will soon go into effect. Some web based companies produce a pop-up window and ask users to click to agree to the, most of use just click without thinking. So does Google latest change really matter, and will we see any actual effects?

Google maintains that its privacy principles remain unchanged and that it does not sell its users personal information or share it without their permission.

Betsy Masiello, Policy Manager at Google, says, “Our privacy controls have not changed. Period. Our users can: edit and delete their search history; edit and delete their YouTube viewing history; use many of our services signed in or out; use Google Dashboard and our Ads Preferences Manager to see what data we collect and manage the way it is used; plus take advantage of our data liberation efforts, if they want to remove information from our services.”

And Google corporate communications officer Eitan Bencuya adds, “We’ve rewritten the main Google Privacy Policy from top to bottom to be simpler and more readable. The new policy replaces more than 60 existing product-specific privacy documents, which will make it easier for users to learn about what information we collect and how we use it.”

So will Google know more about you than your wife does after March 1st? If it does, and if you start getting bombarded with advertising across all Google platforms then this could backfire on Google the way Google Buzz did. Users could simply stop signing into Google accounts, stop using Gmail and start using other search engines such as Bing. However, what will probably happen long term is users will continue to use Google search, they will continue to use Gmail, they will continue to visit You Tube and Google will continue to be the number one search engine. Time will tell.

Published On: February 28th, 2012 by Paul, Tags: , , ,
Posted in SEO, Whiteboard | No Comments »

Google’s first employee, Craig Silverstein, leaves for a new venture

Google’s first employee, Craig Silverstein, is leaving the search engine giant where he’s worked since its conception to begin life with the rising education start-up Khan Academy.

Craig, who was theoretically Google’s third employee, after co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, was instrumental in creating the search engine that has built Google into one of the world’s leading tech companies. Google’s search engine was the first product of its kind and is still its most widely used.

Silverstein’s departure was first reported as a rumour on Wednesday 8th February in an online newsletter produced by EdSurge, an education tech news site. On Thursday, the tech news site AllThingsD confirmed the departure.

Officials at Google and the Khan Academy weren’t available for comment, though Khan Academy employee John Resig wrote on Twitter: “Really excited to be working with Craig Silverstein, Google Employee #1. He’s joining us at Khan Academy.”

Khan Academy is a non-profit start-up in Mountain View, California, USA (where Google is also based). The academy produces online videos, exercises and testing materials in a bid to educate students in maths, science, humanities and finance in countries where educational resources aren’t widely available.

“Silverstein worked side by side with the founders to establish Google’s distinct culture and wrote his fair share of the nascent search engine’s base code”.  ”As Google’s first employee, his net worth has been estimated somewhere in the region of £500 million.”

Silverstein has previously said that he felt a lot of Google’s success was due to luck.

“I guess what I’m most proud of is successfully keeping the culture as well as we have, given all the success and growth that we’ve had”. “I’m proud of that. We haven’t done things perfectly, but we’ve done a lot better than I ever thought we would.”

Google emailed a statement confirming Silverstein’s departure from the company:

“Craig’s been with Google since the early days. He was instrumental in the development of search and made numerous contributions to Google over the years. We wish him all the best at the Khan Academy and know that he will do great things to help them promote education around the world.”

Shantanu Sinha, the president and COO of Khan Academy, also emailed a statement on the group’s latest member, saying:

“We are thrilled to have Craig Silverstein join our team. His deep technical knowledge and organisation-building experience will be extremely valuable to us as we grow as an organisation. We are excited that talented individuals like Craig believe so passionately in our mission and are willing to join us in our quest of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere.”

Published On: February 10th, 2012 by Paul, Tags: , ,
Posted in News, SEO, Whiteboard | No Comments »

Google Favouring Google Plus? Surely Not!!

Google’s search results are undergoing their most radical transformation ever, as a new “Search Plus Your World” was rolled out towards the end of last week. It finds both content that’s been shared with you privately along with matches from the public web, all mixed into a single set of listings. The renovations made in Google’s search abilities will lead to search results now featuring photos, comments and news from Google Plus postings.

However, this may have let Google into some hot water, with their latest venture into the world of social media coming under renewed fire in the US Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust probe, according to news reports.

Apparently, the FTC will be looking into Google which is said to be exploiting its undisputed lead in the search market, in favour of their own product. Google Plus is a site that is believed by many to be the most capable contender to challenge Facebook’s domination in the social media market.

Google Plus, which was launched last year and is seen as an amalgam of both Facebook and Twitter, as the site blends many of both those two platforms’ features together, with its own unique offerings, has already hit over sixty million users so far. Yet given the less-than-flattering feedback from these users, a platform that can compete with Facebook may take some time to achieve.

What does this mean for privacy?

Google Plus cause some privacy worries, as private content may appear as if it is exposed publicly (The feature will only be present for those who have and are signed into a Google Plus account). It might also cause concern by making private content more visible to friends and family than those sharing may have initially intended.

The new format and features will also likely cause Google to come under renewed fire that it is leveraging its search engine to favour its own content and crowd out competitors. However, this debate will no doubt roll on for a while to come.

To summarize, personalised results include:

• Listings from the web

• Listings from the web, boosted because of your personal behaviour

• Listings from the web, boosted because of your social connections

• Public Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos (all of which are also listings from the web)

• Private or “Limited” Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos shared with you

The last line is the most radical change, that private content will now be visible in what seems to be a search across the entire web.

Is any of this important to me?

Well, it could be if you’re a marketer. As we mentioned, the platform now has over 60m users, true many of them are probably dormant accounts, but with Google seemingly favouring/pushing/self-promoting Google plus results, how long do you think it will be before online marketers/SEOs/inbound marketers or whatever you wish to call them take Google Plus serious?

I don’t think Google would be spending time promoting this product if it didn’t have legs, so ignore it at your peril. Personally I won’t take the chance on missing out, so I’ll certainly be using it on a regular basis and once the platform matures, I’ll make my assumptions on its success then.

Published On: January 17th, 2012 by Paul, Tags: , ,
Posted in Articles, News, SEO, Whiteboard | No Comments »

2012 the end of the world? Or the year the web gets mobile?

2012 has been the mecca for predictions for some time, given the ancient Mayan calendar predicts some strange cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21, 2012 to be precise. And the fact that Lynx deodorants now have a ‘2012 Final Edition’ means life’s definitely over this year, so let’s pack up, douse ourselves in Lynx and hit the beach…

Failing this, if you’re slightly saner, and given the slightest possible chance bugger all will happen at the end of this year doom wise,  I reckon we move on to what we know –  2012 will be the year the mobile web takes off once and for all.

There is no doubt that the mobile web took off in 2011, partly due to the availability and cost of smart phones, however I see this as just the beginning.

With the popularity of smart phones rising again, expect to see more of an impact on of the web on your mobile. Ecommerce will finally take off on your phone as capabilities improve and companies seek to exploit the opportunities to market their products to a growing mobile audience.

With that, expect to see the rapid rise of SEO for mobile, making use of location based services such as geo tagging, expect to see more mobile web features spill out into the real world, leading to a new real-time, real-world marketing format for businesses – perhaps high-street browsing optimisation? Who knows right, it’s not in the Mayan calendar so it won’t happen yeah? We will see, but on the 22nd of December 2012 there maybe a few red faces trying to catch up with the mobile revolution…

Published On: January 3rd, 2012 by Paul, Posted in SEO, Whiteboard | No Comments »