Ok, I won’t be repeating it too much, but it is true. Google is pushing Google+ in every possible way they can. Google+ is the center of attention for Google, and they will try anything to get people to use the service.
Since last week Google has found a new way of getting peoples attention towards Plus, with an interesting side effect: it might threaten services like Quora. (more…)
There are many products developed or bought at Google. Most of the products come from the famous 20 percent time at Google. Some of them actually become separate successful products, like GMail for example. Others are mostly meant to be part of a ‘bigger’ project, like for example Urchin, which was meant to be the installable version of Google Analytics and played a huge part in the development of that product.
But sometimes these products lose their use and at that point Google wants to ‘clean them up’. Last week Google announced the ‘death’ of no less than six products, including Urchin and the Social Graph API. That is not needed anymore with Google’s other social identifying tools. (more…)
Because of the enormous amount of news last week we skipped one Friday Talk to come back with a bang. Today you can bookmark this page and safe it to take an hour and twenty minutes somewhere this weekend to sit back and listen to Andrew Hogue who now heads up search at FourSquare, but who at the time of this presentation last year was working for Google on Google Squared. He discusses entities and will give you an insight in what we can expect the next few years. Enlightening!
In the past you could sign up for a Gmail account and that would be it. If you wanted a YouTube or Picasa account you could connect your Gmail to it, but you had to sign up independently for it. The same for your G+ account when Google first launched the service: even though they were connected you had to ‘sign up’ first.
Now if you decide to get a Gmail account you won’t have to sign up separately for all the other services anymore. Your Google Account is now also your Google+ account, your YouTube account and other Google products.
If you now go to the Google sign up page you will see that Google has redesigned the page and that they focus on the entire Google experience: “Your Google Account is more than just Search.” (more…)
Who owns your website? On paper it is you. Because you are the one who is putting the content on your pages. In a perfect world you would however focus on your target audience and would fit the page so they would find what they are looking for within a micro second. In reality it is neither you or your customers who decide what goes where. It is companies like Google and Facebook who in the end make the decisions.
Google just made another decision for you. In a post on their Inside Search Blog Google announces an algorithmic change which makes Google one of the important deciders when it comes to what you put where on your site. Google’s newest change punishes those sites that have too many ads ‘above the fold’. At the same time they don’t seem to live up to their own rules. (more…)
The chances are over the last few days if you have even the slightest passing interest in SEO you will have come across Google Search Plus Your Web (of Search+ to it’s friends) It’s easily one of the biggest single changes in the UX of Google search ever made and is the endgame many have foreseen in Google’s march towards personalisation.
While talking about it many have referred to changes as encouraging ‘filter bubbles’ while the name is fairly self-explanatory I thought many people might benefit of a ‘primer’ on the filter bubble concept and some further reading which you might find interesting in light of Google’s changes. (more…)
This Wednesday many sites around the web will turn black. This as a protest to plans in the US called the Stop Online Piracy Act. Even though the White House is said not to support SOPA this bill might just become a law, which would be disastrous for the online industry. It is supposed to protect the intellectual properties online, but it can also be seen as possible Internet censorship. Therefore some of the big players, like Wikipedia and Reddit, on the web will turn black on Wednesday, to make a statement.
Maybe you are making that same statement. If so, you need to think of a few things. What many sites don’t realize is that “blacking out your site” might just harm your rankings in Google. Google after all doesn’t stop crawling and if they can’t find your site or do find it but won’t find anything ‘but black’ just when you are joining in on the protest, you might just lose your rankings.
Luckily Google has Pierre Far. This Googler, who is speaking at the next Thinkvisibility by the way, is not only a nice guy if you meet him in person, he thinks along with webmasters. So he decided to post some helpful tips for webmasters who plan to participate in the blackout on his Google+ Profile. (more…)
Back in 2009 I was on a panel at SMX London. At the end of the session, during the Q&A we were asked the question who we believed would be the ‘Google Killer’. My answer back then was “The only one who can kill Google, is Google itself”. If you look at the start of 2012 you might think Google is doing just that.
Within two weeks time Google has been hit a few times, which Barry describes nicely on his personal blog. After Manipulating +1 Upvotes, link buying for Chrome and last weeks allegations in Kenya Google now again faces allegations. This time they are accused of ‘vandalizing Open Street Map’. (more…)
Do you not trust public computers with your passwords, because maybe, just maybe a keylogger might be installed which records your password? Well help might be under way. Google is testing a new way of login: QR Codes. But that is just the start. Google says they are already working on ‘something better’.
If you go to Google’s special page on this: https://accounts.google.com/sesame you will see a QR Code. You can scan this barcode with your phone which will then take you to a website using your mobile browser. Google will then prompt you to type in your password and will ask for confirmation you do want to login. Once confirmed, your desktop browser will receive notice from Google that you are good to go and open a Gmail session for you. (more…)
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