Archive for the ‘Social Networking’ Category

Google Search Plus Your World – Reactions & Business Strategy

January 23rd, 2012

Web marketers and those with online businesses everywhere just got a huge boost from Google. A kind of back door has just been opened into Google search results; although, it’s safe to say that Google didn’t intend to do such a thing, and those without plans to run an active Google+ account may not see any direct benefit.

Here’s what happened: On the 10th of January, Google made a change that has altered the type of search results that many of us are already seeing. If you’re a Google+ user, the change concerns “your world” – so to speak – and you may have noticed a slight difference in the kinds of results you’re receiving on a number of different types of searches. What’s happening is that Google is elevating information that has been shared in Google+ (or +1′d) into the upper-end of the search results pages. Google calls this new development “Search, plus Your World” (which we’ll call Search Plus).

 

google-plus-searchSearch Plus is the latest search results treatment by the folks from Mountain View, California. Some may ask “why are they doing this?” A fair question. A few experts in the industry have stated that Google is seeding Google+ data into search results because they want searchers with Google+ accounts to contribute to Google+ more often. Others claim that Google is acting on the idea that “personalized” search results are more relevant results.

Google, to no one’s total surprise, is putting a positive spin on the new development.

From Google Inside Search: “Search has always brought you information from across the web. Now, search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends. When signed in with Google+, you’ll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow. You can even expand your world by discovering people related to your search.”  

What this boils down to is that when you’re logged in to Google+ and perform a Google search for a product or service – those results that have been shared by a member of one of your circles or +1’d by a friend are likely to rise to the top of the search results. In other words, if you’re looking for a new messenger bag and one of your Google+ friends has +1’d products from Timbuk2 – bang – there it is at the top of your search results. That’s a significant development.

Consumer Reaction

The market is having mixed reactions. Some search users say that it’s a radical departure from traditional search: Why would Google think that I want to see search results from my circles of friends? Facebook has already told me all about what they like or don’t like.

Others have labeled it a puzzling transformation: There’s no reason to strip out all of the relevant search engine results in favor of results driven by social media.   

And while it’s interesting to hear some grumble over how search is being altered, search marketers and savvy business owners are watching how Google+ is already populating search results. As businesses benefit from social proof, there is good reason to be excited.

Already, businesses are touting their products, service, brand and corporate identity through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Pinterest. Google+ pages are the next logical add-on for any web marketing strategy. But the difference here is that the results of their marketing efforts can be seen immediately in Google search.

What happened to Google’s “Don’t Be Evil”?

Now, some would say that Google (and search as a whole) has forced the hands of many marketers and business owners alike. Let’s face it, if you’re in business today, you have a web marketing strategy (at the very least) in the planning – so that you can be in business tomorrow. That said, yes, the changes in search (including Google pulling keyword data out of Analytics) will change your web marketing plan from quarter to quarter. And this quarter is all about leveraging the power of Google+ to get your foot in the back door to the top of the search results pages at Google.

The other part to consider is the wrath of larger companies like Twitter and Facebook. Perhaps the most interesting item to stem from all this is a new website created over the weekend: http://www.focusontheuser.org/. The YouTube video (below) from the site anonymously outlines how Facebook and Twitter provide more relevant results but Google chooses their own social network first to rank.

The video is so simple to follow even a US Congressman should be able to follow it:
Focus on The User

Tags: Algorithm, Facebook, Google, Social Networking, Twitter
Posted in Facebook, Google, Google+, SEO, Social Networking, Twitter | No Comments

Pinterest, Discover the Power of Pinning

January 16th, 2012

Pinterest, created by Paul Sciarra, Evan Sharp, and Ben Silbermann and launched March 2010, bills itself as an “online pinboard,” where connected users can discover images of things to “pin” to their theme-based pin boards and share their new findings with friends and followers.

Think of Pinterest as an online French memo board if you like – but don’t discount its social leverage or its marketing power.

The Time.com website listed Pinterest as one of the “50 Best Websites of 2011.” The media has called Pinterest a “Hot New Social Network” and a “Shift from Search to Discovery.” Venture financing is in the hundreds of millions. And the “pinners” are signing up in droves. In all, there has been a significant amount of chatter regarding the photo-sharing website. Enough chatter to raise a few questions: How does it work? How big is Pinterest? What does the Pinterest market look like? What does it all mean to search marketers? Will Pinterest upend search?

Let’s take it one-by-one.

Pinterest works simply enough. When you set up your Pinterest account (which is still “invite only” at the time of this writing), you’re asked to download a browser plug-in that fixes a “Pin It” button to your bookmarks bar. So, during your-day-to-day browsing, when you find an image of a recipe for Cuban Black Bean Patties with Pineapple Rice or a Hokusai woodblock print or a Moshiki wool cap that you wish to attach to any one of your themed pin boards, one click will save it to your Pinterest account. Your discovery shows up on the Pinterest home page for all your co-pinners to view.

Pinterest is big. According to a November comScore report, Pinterest had an estimated 2,000% increase in U.S. pageviews since the previous June. That’s six months. In October of 2011 alone, the site generated 421 million pageviews. Pinterest also saw a significant user growth in 2011 from 1 million users in January to 6 million by the end of December. When you take those numbers and add the VC money, it’s easy to see that Pinterest has some serious momentum.

The Pinterest market is definitely female dominated. Take a look at Pinterest and you’ll see what appears to be a massive (truly massive) crowd-sourced magazine – something Martha Stewart herself would covet. Most site usage demographic reports show that the Pinterest user base is somewhere between 65% and 85% female – and the most significant percentage of those female Pinterest users are between the ages of 35 and 44 years old. With the majority of the content in design, fashion, home décor and crafts, it can easily be stated that the content leans toward the female side of the products and services market. For those businesses in home décor, crafts, art, architecture, design, and food and drink, there’s a massive opportunity to get their products out and seen. Revenues are sure to follow.

For search marketers, Pinterest is a new playground. Pinterest and search are already linked. On the “Help Page” section of the Pinterest website there are instructions on how to prevent your Pinterest account from showing up in Google search – but there’s apparently no rush to add no-follows to Pinterest accounts. From the marketing perspective, the bump that products and services may receive from pinners will be decided by how their content is displayed on their websites. This is akin to the social bookmarking sites of the past. Today, items seen on Pinterest are photos. Eye-catching photos of products and services will drive pinners to act and share. That fact cannot be understated. So, if your restaurant is offering a particularly tasty Cuban Black Bean Patty with Pineapple Rice, and you’d like pinners to share it around with all their followers, you’d be best served to hire a professional food photographer to take some delicious-looking pics and have your web marketing team create a page of supporting content that gets the mouth watering. Of course, adding the words “Pin Me!” to your content pages wouldn’t hurt either.

Search has nothing to fear from Pinterest. Here’s why: A number of the media reporters have called Pinterest a “Shift from Search to Discovery.” That may be true within the pages of the Pinterest site, but it means little on the web. The terms “search” and “discovery” describe two very different actions.

If you’re “searching” for a dentist or a mechanic or a Cuban restaurant, it can be easily said that you already know what you’re looking for and you’d like a capable search engine to return a result that is highly relevant to your needs. I know what I want. Give it to me and we’ll be done.

Discovery, however, means something entirely different. When, in 1741, Vitus Jonassen Bering, a Danish-born navigator, set off to map the Russia-Siberia coast, he discovered the southern coast of Alaska. The difference here is that Bering – from whom we get the name “the Bering Strait” – was engaged in another activity when he stumbled upon something of great importance. Oh, my… what’s this new thing? We should definitely take a closer look at it. We may want that!

In the end, Pinterest may grow to be an absolutely essential site for the promotion of products and services that meet the interests of its user base. Pinned items will show up in search returns but mere images may not offer the kind of content depth that searchers need to make a buying decision. For those looking to “polish up” items in their product and service offerings, hiring a web marketing team, a social media expert and a decent content developer (like those at Sweet Spot Marketing) will improve your potential for higher pin numbers.

Pin on, you pinners!    

Posted in Content Development, SEO, Social Networking | No Comments

Google Picks up a Patent on Behavioral Quality Signals

December 9th, 2011

Human behavior is an interesting subject. Ask a behavioral psychologist or an FBI profiler what they can tell you about the people they routinely observe and you’ll get an answer that sounds something like “People are walking, talking volumes of information. The more they talk and act, the more we know about their behavior and the better we can predict where they’ll go and what they’ll do next.”

Evidently, Google knows this as well.

At the end of November, the folks from Mountain View, California picked up U.S. Patent #8065296 to automate and expedite the process of evaluating search results based on “observed” behavior and allowing Google to return a greater level of relevant search results. Since Google originally filed for the patent in 2004, it’s a fair assumption that this behavioral evaluation process is something that they’ve been working on for quite some time and it is highly likely that it will allow Google to also return advertising results in the same manner.

The reason for this patent? According to the documents filed at the USPTO, Google asserts that a better model for predicting likely search results is needed “because the amount of information on the web and the number of new users inexperienced at web searching are growing rapidly.”

Google goes on to explain. “It may be desirable to monitor the quality of the search results provided to users in order to notice general trends of improving or declining quality and to identify specific problems that might suddenly cause a drop in quality. Manual evaluation of search quality can be laborious and time consuming, typically allowing for a small number of searches and search results to be evaluated to determine overall quality of a search engine.”

So what are we talking about when we speak of behavioral quality signals? In short, behavioral signals are those signals generated by human interaction on the web. It sounds simple, but the patent document muddies the issue:

“A method comprising: providing items during a time period; and determining an indication of quality of the items provided during the time period using a time series model; and taking remedial measures when the indication of quality of the items is below an expectation, wherein the remedial measures comprise: automatically removing a modification associated with the providing; wherein the items include search results.”

To make this easy to understand, I’m going to give you a dead-simple example.

Let’s say your grocery store manager tells you where to find the high-fiber cereal down the massively-long aisle with all the cereal boxes. He stays on to watch you make your selection, noting as you pull one box off the shelf, quickly scan the package and stuff it back. He makes a mental note that you only spent about two seconds with the first box. He then observes you as you select another box of high-fiber cereal and spend a full two minutes reading the product information on the back of the box before putting it in your basket. Again, he makes a mental note and comes to the conclusion that, for a person such as yourself who wants high-fiber cereal, box two was a more favorable brand. Then he waits around the cereal aisle to see if anyone else fitting your description does the same. In the end, his hopes are to be able to move the preferred cereal boxes to a more high-profile location along the cereal box aisle, allowing high-fiber cereal enthusiasts to save a little time in their shopping.

Given the example, it’s easy to conclude that behavioral quality signals are a complex mechanism used to predict complex behavior. Every behavioral style is unique. Every search result is therefore unique. It’s well known that Google has been using panels of human testers to judge the quality of their search results and assess whether one algorithm tweak resulted in better or worse search results than another (and here they’re talking about measuring the quality of the search engine results pages – rather than an individual page). Bing, the big competitor on the block, also uses quality signals in ranking. But the human testing component is a laborious effort, not practical. The patent is for an automated process. If Google is looking to improve their speed to market, automation would be enormously helpful.

So why is Google jumping into the game only now? The answer: Remember, the patent for this process was applied for in 2004, so it’s been a long time coming. Google has been waiting on this patent for some time. For Google, it’s another tool to allow them to deliver more relevant search results than ever before. For web marketers and site owners, it’s a clarion call for quality content.

Tags: Behavioral Marketing, Display Ads
Posted in Google, Google Adwords, Google+, PPC | No Comments

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