Your Influence (and Klout Score) is Worth Money

As you may know I am not a big fan of Klout or the services like Klout. Simply because it in most cases gives people the wrong impression of influence. You can be an influencer with a low Klout score or you can seem to be an influencer because you may have a high Klout score while in fact nobody cares about your opinion.

Still it is inevitable that we have to deal with services like this, because it is how we try to get a grip on the whole ‘influence’ matter. Because influence and authority will matter. We’ve seen it with Search Plus Your World. The more influence you have the more visible you get to be, so you need to be as visibile as possible. And your influence is going to be worth money. Lots of it. And Klout is one of the first to actually show us that. … Continue Reading

Friday Talk: Wil Reynolds Keynote at Affiliate Summit East 2011

Wil Reynolds is one of the most appreciated experts in the search industry. Wil spoke at the Affiliate Summit last year in New York. His keynote was insightful and had some nice learning elements in it. Enjoy, oh and skip the  first 6 minutes which only has some practical information about the Summit in it.

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Google+ Now Available For Teenagers

Bradley Horowitz, Vice President Product Management Google+, has announced that teenagers are now allowed to sign up for the network. This means that Google+ is now open to a whole new group of potential users because before this announcement you’ve had to be at least 18 in order to join.

In most countries you now have to be at least 13 to use the service. In some countries the minimum age is higher, in the Netherlands for example it’s 16 and in Spain and South Korea 14. These are now the same requirements Facebook has when it comes to age regulations. … Continue Reading

Google Confirms Panda Update 3.2: A “Data Refresh”

SEO’s have been noticing fluctuations again over the past week or so, suggesting that another Panda Update might be around the corner. Today Google has confirmed to SearchEngineland they indeed have done a new ‘Panda Update’, which is numbered as being Panda Update 3.2.

Searchengineland says Google has confirmed that they have done a ‘data refresh’ about a week ago. This means that there were not made any algorithmic changes, just another run through by Google, a so called ‘minor update’.

The last Panda Update was from last November and that was also a minor update. Google did the last bigger update in October.

No easy answers to an age old problem

What started as an innocuous article on a regional publication, last week provoked a lot of debate on both sides of the pond around the age old SEO subject of integrity. The article in question related to a SEO company based here in the UK who had released a press release claiming to be the number 1 SEO in the UK. Now this post is certainly not going to tackle that particular subject as I and I would imagine many of the State of Search readers are very bored of that particular subject.

What I did think it highlighted was the fact that despite the SEO industry has come on leaps and bounds, we do still struggle with many of the age old problems that have so often blighted it in the past. Many people have suggested a number of ways of attempting to help organisations looking for SEO services – particularly as SEO moves away from the cottage industry mentality into one closely integrated with other channels such as PR and Social Media. … Continue Reading

Local: The Brands Opportunity

Location Location Location, it’s what real estaters say but its what marketers should say also. Local can and should play a huge role in marketing, all sorts of marketing, whether it is search, social, online or even offline marketing. Especially brands can benefit a lot. That is what this infographic is all about … Continue Reading

Greplin: Search your Social Timeline

There’s search and there is social search. Usually “social search” stands for search through social media or searching with social elements embedded within the search, think the “x-many people +1 this” in the search results. Since a few weeks ‘social search’ stands for everything which is shared via Google+. At least, if you are logged into Google.com

In the shadow of Google there are a lot of small search engines who each try to beat Google at the social search game. Or at least they try to take a piece of the search pie. Can they be successful however?

“Personal search engine” Greplin is one of the social search engines which tries to grab a part of social search. It looks through your social accounts to find that one message or topic you lost or couldn’t remember who said it. I decided to take a good look at this search engine. To see if it is useful and if it is capable of being a Google competitor. … Continue Reading

Google AdWords Features From 2011 You Should Be Using In 2012

Welcome to my first post as a full time blogger for State of Search. In this post, I am going to recap on some of the features within Google AdWords that have been launched over the past year which we should all be considering when managing campaigns in 2012.

With Paid Search (PPC) costs continuing to rise, it has become more important than ever to pay attention to how you are managing PPC campaigns. Google AdWords in particular has seen Cost per Click costs increasing significantly over the past year and this is set to continue as more advertisers start joining the PPC marketing game.

In addition to rising costs, PPC platforms are continuously adding new features and tools, which we all need to be aware of to ensure campaigns are running efficiently and are not wasting money. … Continue Reading

Larry Page Tells Employees: Understand Search Plus Your World or Leave

Google launch of Search Plus Your World now two weeks ago (how time flies) has lead to a lot of discussion on different levels. There is the “do we want to get this much personalized?” question, there is the FTC “is Google favoring their own products too much” question and there is a privacy question floating around, but most of all its the “Has Google turned Evil?” question.

The mantra which used to define Google, ‘do no evil’ seems to have turned against them on the public opinion, or at least that of the tech industry. That could really hurt Google as a brand, but there is one other area in which Google could be hurting: the employees. Are the happy with Google changes? And what if they’re not, does that matter? One thing is clear for them it’s: follow the leader (Page) or leave. … Continue Reading