Posts by Bas van den Beld

Bas van den Beld is a speaker, trainer and online marketing strategist. Bas is the owner of Stateofsearch.com. -- You can hire Bas to speak, train or consult. -- More articles and bio from Bas van den Beld
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Google SERP Tests That Didn’t Make It

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We all know that Google is testing a lot of things all the time. They usually do this by giving a portion of the users a new feature, function or design to look out. Based on the responses (not the tweets, but how people actually click) they figure out what works and what doesn’t.

We always love to look at the new changes Google is testing out. It gives us an insight into where Google is heading. Now most of the things we spot are indeed changes which are actually being made. Many of the tests which are spotted by many make it. But there are also a lot of changes which don’t make it. This weekend I stumbled on a presentation of a Googler which showed some screens of design tests that didn’t make it. What is interesting about looking at tests that didn’t make it? For one thing, it gives us an idea of how Google is thinking. And you still might see some of the test-changes become actual changes in the future, who knows. (more…)

“Social Search” goes world wide

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Google has announced that it is taking its social search functionality global. This means that now also people outside of the US will get more and more socially integrated search results. This goes from the “shared this” functionality to specific blogs, flickr account and other social media from within your social circle.

Social search results in other languages and on other domains are mixed throughout the Google results page based on their relevance. The results will (for now) only be shown to those logged into their gmail-accounts. (more…)

News near you: local, mobile and personal integrated by Google

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Yet again Google has launched a new feature. And again it seems to be part of their bigger strategy which has to lead to a more social like Google: news near you. If you are an Android or iPhone user living in the US you can now go to news.google.com and you will be prompted with a request to share your location. If you accept, “news near you” will be available.

The feature was introduced by Google News Product Manager Navneet Singh. The new service from Google lets you see news from the location your phone tells you where you are. You can personalize it further on the personalization page where you can determine whether you want news on specific topics. (more…)

Facebook Behind Whisper Campaign Against Google

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Earlier this week I reported about a “whisper campaign” which had been set up against Google by PR Company Burson-Marsteller, trying to get media outlets to report about privacy issues around Google’s social circle and Gmail. The whisper campaign backfired at Burson-Marsteller when the story came out on USA Today.

At that time the client which had hired Burson-Marsteller to set up the campaign was unknown. We immediately thought of companies like Microsoft, Apple or Facebook. But Burson-Marsteller was smart enough to mention them too in their e-mails as being companies who were dancing around on thin ice when it comes to privacy matters. Now is revealed, and confirmed, that it was indeed Facebook that had hired Burson-Marsteller. The reason? Google tried to use Facebook data for their search results. (more…)

Everyday compassion at Google: presentation by Google’s Chade-Meng Tan

Google is not only looked at because of their search techniques, or their advertising skills, or all the different products they have out there already, they are also looked at from a Human Resource point of view. Working at Google is supposedly something very special. One of the people behind that ‘success’ is Chade-Meng Tan. He was of Google’s earliest engineers and is now Google’s “Jolly Good Fellow”: the head of personal.

Chade-Meng Tan was invited to speak at one of the TED Conferences. This one is in New York, in the UN building. He talks about how Google practices compassion in its everyday business.

PR-Company Supposedly Started Whisper Campaign Against Google

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The world of PR is a strange one. Some might think it is nothing more than sending out a few press releases. It however is a lot more than that. And it also has a dark side to it. PR agencies also are very well versed in lobbying. Trying to get politicians to vote a specific way or trying to get journalists to write about a specific topic. Now that sometimes can get into a grey area. Because the ways to get people to vote or write in a specific direction differ very much.

PR company Burson-Marsteller doesn’t have the best name in the market when it comes to campaigns like this. And it now seems as if they tried to ‘nail’ Google on privacy matters using a so called “whisper campaign” (Wikipedia: “a method of persuasion in which damaging rumors or innuendo are spread about the target”). They tried to get several top media outlets in the US to write news stories and editorials about how Google was invading privacy from Americans using their Social Circle features. (more…)

Linkdex and Yoast team up in newest update of WordPress SEO Plugin

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An exciting new cooperation takes place in the world of tools, SEO and WordPress. Linkdex, the SEO tool we recently reviewed with great enthusiasm, will be showing up in a surprising place: Yoast’s WordPress SEO Plugin.

Joost de Valk has built and expanded this plugin a lot in the past year and not without success. The plugin has been downloaded over 200.000 times already. The newest update will bring the number of downloads up really fast. (more…)

State of Search readers also read Searchengineland and Searchenginewatch

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A little over ten days ago I started a small poll asking which other blogs you as a State of Search reader also read. Not as a contest, but to get an insight into what kind of visitors we have. I’m gonna be dropping more questions like that onto you. Simply because I want to make sure that at State of Search we deliver the best possible content fitting for our readers. We want to grab your intent so to speak ;) .

I will also share the results of the polls with you. This first poll didn’t get a very high response (aren’t you reading other blogs? ;) ). But hey, its a start. Looking at the results we see that Searchengineland, followed by Searchenginewatch, the Dave Naylor blog and SEOMoz are the most read blogs amongst our readers. The results: (more…)

Google is Testing New Search Result Pages, Opinions on Twitter differ

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Google has been making quit some changes to its SERPS in the past months, most of which we reported on here on State of Search. Only a few days ago we highlighted some tests Google was doing.

And just when the ink is dry Google decides it is time for yet another “test”. This time a little bit bigger then the others though, if we can believe our sources but also those on Twitter, which are with a lot more. Many people are spotting a new way of presenting the search results. The comments differ, but in general people think they are ‘ugly’.

The biggest change we can see from the screenshots going around Twitter (I haven’t spotted this in the wild myself yet) are the not-underlined results which we talked about earlier this week, much more “white” on the page and in some cases a dotted line between the results. (more…)

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