Posts About ‘Google’

The State of Search for News

Most SEOs are focused primarily on organic search results in Google’s ‘standard’ web search engine. However websites that specialise in providing news have a different Google in mind when it comes to optimisation: Google News.

Biggest Single Source of Traffic

UK newspaper traffic sourcesAccording to data from the Newspaper Marketing Agency the biggest source of traffic for UK newspaper sites is Google, generating over 45% of all visits. This data does not distinguish between the various Google search products, but both Hitwise and my own experiences with the Belfast Telegraph website indicate that the vast bulk of that traffic originates from Google News.

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Google wants more of your money: showing AdWords ads for related searches

Tonight’s the semi-final of the World Cup, where the Netherlands will compete against Uruguay. As a true SEO I decided to check out the Google SERP for the query ‘uruguay’. There I found Google showing Adwords ads for the related search query ‘uruguay real estate’. I just bumped into this today. I don’t know if it’s really new, but I hadn’t noticed it before.

I’d say it’s a smart move from Google to make more money. This search query normally would show me just one ad from Google itself. So there’s not a chance Google’s making any money from me using this query. So why not show some other ads anyway? They don’t know if I’m interested in real estate in Uruguay, so it ‘s a long shot. Heck, they’re advertising for something completely different themselves. But even with the small chance of me clicking on it, chances are higher than with no other ads at all.

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What “Google Me” should be

After a tweet sent out by Digg founder Kevin Rose last week all of a sudden there is another ‘buzz’ (no not the Google one) going around the web about the newest feature in the battle between Google and Facebook. Where Facebook last week announced they were going into search (more on that in a different post), it is now suggested that Google is going into social (again).

Rose’s tweet suggested there might be a “Google Me” on the way. What “Google Me” exactly is, is not clear yet. Google so far hasn’t given any official comment on the rumor. Which off course makes everyone believe its real. On TechCrunch Adam D’Angelo, an ex-Facebook CTO, was quoted saying that the rumors were true and that Google was going after Facebook. On the other hand Kevin Rose already deleted his tweet, which makes the rumor even more strange.

Three things come to mind when you read all the comments and suggestions out there: What is it and (for God’s sake) why does Google go in to the social business again. And finally: what should “Google Me” be?
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Battle of the World Cup SERPs

The World Cup, the biggest sports event on the planet, is underway! And because I’ve always wanted to do a sports-themed blog post, I’ve compared the “world cup” SERPs for five different search engines to see what information they present and how.

Google

When you search for ‘world cup’ in Google, the top of the SERP consists of the results of the last few matches played, and an overview of the upcoming matches.

The matches played have links pointing to recap articles on the FIFA site. Below this list there are links to the FIFA.com homepage, the World Cup schedule, current standings and the overview of the England team – Google after all knows where I am, never mind that England is not the UK and the Northern Irish don’t have any particular reason to cheer for the England squad. But we’ve all come to understand that American search companies have great difficulty coming to grips with the intricacies of European nationalities and cultures. (more…)

Watch out Facebook, here comes the “Kroesade”

She has a reputation of being the iron lady and many Dutch believe she would be the best choice to become the next Dutch prime minister. But Neelie Kroes believes she has a job to do at the European Commission. And Social Networksites might regret that Kroes didn’t want to become prime minister. She has started her crusade or should we say “Kroesade”.

Where in her last job as euro kartel commissioner Kroes went after companies like Microsoft in her new job she’s after the social networksites like Facebook, Google Buzz and Hyves. Recent developments with Facebook and Buzz must have attracted attention in Brussels. (more…)

Google wants us to know they make the US money

It’s not a secret that Google has a high influence on many companies world wide. Many (smaller) companies rely on Google Advertising and on Google search for their business. And there are many sites out there who make money out of Adsense.

Last week in the US it was National Small Business week. A reason for Google to tell the world once again how important they are. And they decided to throw it in their with quite the air: “Google’s U.S. economic impact” was the title of their post. In this post they explain how much money Google is making the US. They even set up a special page where you can not only download the report but also look at different states to see where Google has the most impact.

A look at the map show us for example that Google generated $863 million of economic activity for 25,000 Minnesota businesses, website publishers and non-profits in 2009. In the ‘homestate’ California Google generated 14.1 billion dollars. In total Google ‘made’ the US over 54 billion dollars in economic activity. (more…)

Find out which universal results Google shows for all of your important search querys

Google is showing more and more universal results blended in the regular search results for different queries. For the search queries we’re targeting I wanted to try and map which kinds of results Google shows. I started doing it by hand but soon realized it was going to take me lot of time for one client, let alone for all our clients. So I started looking for a piece of software that could help me out. Roy Huiskes adviced me to use Mozenda. Mozenda is best described as a piece of software to gather data from the web, based on a defined track of actions. I tried solving my issue and succeeded! Here´s how to do it yourself in 10 easy steps: (more…)

The Mayday update and its long tail issues: Dave Naylor’s view on it

There has been a lot of discussion lately about what happened with the MayDay update Google has done. Many website owners are experiencing a drop of long tail traffic from 30% to 50%. People are still guessing about what happened and how to solve it.

At

  • Social Marketing: From Offline to Universal (#a4uexpo presentation)
  • 6 killer presentations from #a4uexpo: Advanced Analytics, Information Architecture, Negative SEO & more
  • Launching an Affiliate Business on a ShoeString – A4U Expo London 2010
  • Microformat and Datafeed Optimisation – A4U Expo London 2010
  • Using Your Competitor’s Tactics to Gain a Competitive Edge – A4UExpo London 2010
    • Munich I talked to Dave Naylor for State of Search (www.stateofsearch.com) to find out his views on the matter. In 8 minutes Dave talks about what he saw and what can or cannot be done about it.

    The question now remains: where will this go? Has anybody experienced these drops in traffic? Let us know!

    Privacy: do we really care what Facebook and Google are doing?

    Last week Facebook announced their new ‘Like’ feature, which is supposed to make the web even a bit more social. But this likable feature, which without a doubt will generate even more traffic for some sites, also raises some privacy questions. The service connects different sites and makes surfing probably more pleasant but in the meanwhile gathers a lot of information on what you are doing on the web.

    Everybody has got their eyes on Google when it comes to privacy but Facebook might very well be a bigger threat. I explained last week how the “Like” functionality connects all the dots and has Facebook ‘control’ you over different sites. With Facebook however there is another big problem: you never know what they’re up to. They change their privacy rules once in a while, which makes it difficult to keep track of what they are doing. The new way is opt-out, both with Facebook as with Google, which means that you are automatically ‘sentenced’ to join in. And if you don’t know that you can or don’t know how to opt out you have a problem. Sounds big. But do we really care? (more…)

    Google Local Business Listings – Will it ever be fixed?

    If you “follow me” and read my blogposts (rants) you might have noticed I seem to have gotten myself into a “ranting niche” with Google Local Business Listings, and today when sitting down to write a blogpost it’s yet again Google Local that I have “a bone to pick” with.

    Google Local Business Listings is Going Places (see what I did there)
    First of all,  it’s now officially not called Google Local Business listings anymore, nope, it’s called Google Places.  Yep that’s right “great” name change. But if your read the linked article it’s also some new functionalities with this re-branding, albeit slightly boring updates.

    In the last 6 months I’ve taken a particular interest in Google Local (damn it, it’s going to take some doing getting used to calling it “Google Places”), one of the reasons my interest has grown is admitately, entirely selfish. One of my largest clients (a hotel chain) are ideal candidates for local business listings. It was about last July we started optimising their local business listings and we saw immense growth, not just in traffic but in actual conversions. This has now become a central part of their search marketing strategy, in fact it’s kind of changed our the entire initial strategy. Local has been a goldmine for relevant traffic for this client and the focus has been turned to primarily local. (more…)

    Facebook turns web upside down, watch out Google, watch out privacy

    The world wide web used to be simple: you had websites and you had Google indexing them. Based on the ‘Google formula’ they would rank in a way Google thought was best, and we’d agree. Ok, this might be a little bit exaggerated, but its the essence of how we work with Google. Yesterday at the Facebook f8 conference however things changed.

    Google is one of the biggest players, if not the biggest player out there. There have been many over the past decade who have tried to compete with the search giant and none of them really succeeded. Bing probably made the most impact, but only because it won a few percentages of market share in the search area. But now Facebook has stepped in. And they make a very good chance of ‘beating’ Google when it comes to web dominance.

    Facebook announced several new features with the new Open Graph API, the social plugins and the Open Graph protocol as biggest changes. These elements are supposed to change the way we look at the web. Using this API Facebook will try to integrate websites and applications with your social network. This will mean different ‘points’ on the web you use are connected using your social circle. As Zuckerberg said: people are connecting the web, not links. (more…)

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