Posts About ‘News’

Google Easter Egg: Lionel Richie: “Hello, is it me you’re looking for?”

Not a very spectacular Easter Egg this time like the recently discovered game Zerg Rush but a small one, designed to put a smile on your face (if you would notice), especially for those from a certain age.

The Easter Egg is related to the recently introduced Knowledge Graph, the big database from Google with all sorts of information about persons, places and other things which is used to show extra information related to a query right next to the normal search results.

This is exactly what the latest Easter Eggs is related to. When searching for the singer-songwriter Lionel Richie Google will show as the title of the information on the right, “Hello, is it me you’re looking for”. This off course referring to the line from the famous song “Hello” from mister Richie from 1983.

Ok, it´s very small Easter Egg, but it is funny and probably there are more of these Knowledge Graph related eggs hidden in the search engine. The Egg currently only works on Google.com.

Google+ Local Launched

It has been coming for a while, Google was focussing on local elements a lot as well as Google+. Now the both are combined within Google+: Just now Google rolled out Google+ Local.

Google+ Local is what Marissa Mayer calls “a simple way to discover and share local information featuring Zagat scores and recommendations from people you trust in Google+.”

It does what it is expected to be doing: giving you local information and recommendations by your network. It suddenly got a lot more interesting to get local people connected to you on Google+. (more…)

Google Launches “Webmaster Academy”

There are millions of business owners out there. Some big ones, but most of them small ones. Each of them has the same issue: getting online integrated in their business. But how?

The bigger companies hire agencies to do the online part for them, but there are many who can’t afford that or simply want to do this themselves. Google acknowledges that there is a big group out there looking for information just on how to get started.

That is why last week the search giant decided to launch the “Webmaster Academy“. A new online resource platform just for small businesses to learn about Google… (more…)

Google Celebrates Your Birthday

Maybe you already noticed in the last couple of years that Google is celebrating your own birthday with a special doodle. When the magical moment of your birthday has arrived then go to the homepage of the search engine and you will see the logo, when hovering over the image with your mouse the the text ‘Happy Birthday [Frontname]’ will show, after clicking on the doodle there’s no search query like with normal doodles but in this case your own profile on Google+ will open instead.

Google shows the doodle based on the date in your profile and ofcourse the logo is only shown when you are logged in. Tis started in 2010 and recently Google renewed the logo I noticed today after opening the homepage, the new version has more cakes and firework then the previous version, both versions below.

In any case it´s a nice way to congratulate users with there birthday, so thanks Google!

Previous version

Is Google Declaring War by Banning an Agency for Mistakes on Clients Sites?

Again the search industry is once again in uproar. Why? Because somewhere somebody took a wrong turn, someone else saw it and told Google. And now Google is upset.

To be honest, it’s like looking at my kids sometimes, but that’s a different story. What is more interesting at this specific point is Google’s reaction yesterday to the alleged buying of links by search agency iAqcuire: they didn’t kick out the clients for who they may have bought links, they kicked out the agency.

It was smart find by Barry Schwartz at Searchengineland last night when he did a site command search for [site:www.iacquire.com] and didn’t get any results back. There was no site there, which usually means either the company has withdrawn itself from Google or has made a mistake (I’ve seen enough ‘no index’ which shouldn’t have been there in robots.txts around the globe over the past few years) or the company has been penalized by Google. (more…)

Larry Page: “Search is not just about finding things. It’s about taking actions”

Every year Google looks back to the past and forward to the future with their ‘Zeitgeist’. A few days ago Larry Page, CEO of Google, held his ‘Zeitgeist’ talk in the UK.

Wearing his Google Glass he talked for twenty minutes about where Google is heading. You can see the entire video here, below are some highlighted quotes from the talk.

A few interesting remarks from Page:

“I think that the pace of change is really accelerating.”

“It is not a question of “if” now, it is just a question of “when.” “

“we have an awful lot of products, some of which people don’t seem to care that much about. So we went through and we — we went through kind of a painful process where we shut down or closed over 30 different things.”

“Google+ which is our social efforts, and people are a bit confused about this. I’d say that we think it’s really important that when you’re using Google, you be able to easily share things.”

“And the other part where people are a little bit confused about what we’re doing, that’s the social spine of Google. That means everything in Google gets better by being able to share and have identity and things like that.”

“I think if you used Google from five years ago, you’ll be astounded at how bad it is. Or how bad it was, right? And, you know, search has gotten a lot better.”

“Also maybe in the last week or so, we released this thing called the Knowledge Graph, or Knowledge Panels, we’re calling them, and those actually give you — if you search for “Tesla” now, “Tesla,” then you get the car and you get the scientist, and we know lots of things about them. So, you know, if you search about, you know, a different — a lake or something like that, we’ll know the depth of the lake.”

“And what we’re really trying to do is to really get to the point where we can represent knowledge and we can do much more complicated types of queries.”

“Search also is not just about finding things. It’s really about taking actions”

“You don’t want to just look at 10 different links but you want to actually buy something or you want to book a flight or you want to know what the weather is”

“Android’s really on fire now, which I probably don’t have to tell you all, and it’s very, very exciting. It’s a big area of focus for us, obviously.”

“We’ve actually been doubling revenue every year on YouTube for four years”

Oh and one more thing, you know, Larry says “you know” 70 times in twenty minutes…

“Stop Talking – Get Back To Work” – Exclusive Interview with Mike King

This is a guest post (interview) by Andy Betts, a freelance consultant for many search and digital technology startups, agencies, and direct advertisers on sales and marketing, products and technology. Like this post? Let us know!

I had the pleasure of meeting Mike King last week at SMX London to talk through his thoughts on the SEO space and the future of SEO. For those who don’t know Mike, you should! Mike has a done a lot for the SEO community of the last year. Just take a look at this for an example;

However, before I share the transcript of our chat I wanted to update you issue that happened last week. Danny Sullivan, once again, produced a great overview of the topic here and I know the equally awesome Bas van den Beld is soon to share his thoughts too here on State of Search.

Personally – I do not want to draw too much light on the original author or post. I don’t like outing or baiting. What’s more I think it’s important not to make personal assumptions about people on something that may/may not have happened before they joined?

I totally agree with Danny comment below on my interviewee.

“He’s sharp, has lots of insight, and he seemed a win for iAcquire when they hired him about two months ago”

“Stop Talking – Get Back To Work”

1. You seem to have been given a bit of a hard time over the last few days? Many people, despite all the good community spirit, seem to have been outing and posting negative after negative. Firstly, what’s your take on events (bearing in mind you have been in your new role for only a few months)?

“Yeah, there was a lot of half-cocked hate being thrown my way. It seemed like certain people were just waiting to be able to say something about me. That’s a shame especially seeing that I’ve done a lot for the community in the last year. Not sure I really need to defend myself, but I especially thank all the awesome people that have showed their support. It’s clear that level-headed people know my work is white hat and I joined this organization to engage in white hat practices, improve processes and grow the agency. But for those that are unclear, let me be clear that I’ve never bought or sold a link ever in my life, nor do I support the practice. What I myself do and encourage are the strategies and tactics that I have championed throughout my career both in and out of the spotlight. Have I failed in the past? Hell yes, but for better or worse, that’s just not what I do.”

2. How do we solve this? Does it need to solved?

“Simple. Everybody should just stop talking and get back to work. If it’s not of value to anyone, don’t involve me in it and don’t talk to me about it.”

3. Does this help people’s perceptions of SEO?

“Not at all. The only winner after a situation like this is Google. I bet Matt Cutts was sitting in the Googleplex enjoying how he has manipulated us into doing his job. Here’s my thing Google is not the law. Google does not own the internet. I do “white hat” stuff because I like having lasting results, but beyond that I couldn’t care less about Google and their made up rules that only benefit them. Google can’t dictate what’s morally correct when they are stealing intellectual property and invading people’s privacy. The in fighting in the community is not useful either whether it be over black hat/white hat, seo/inbound marketing, or whatever. So leave me out of all that. I’m just going to be over here doing what it is I do to move things forward. “

SEO – Passion, Change and the Future - An interview at SMX London

1. Great to see you again here in the UK Mike. What’s brought you here?

“Hey Andy, yeah it’s crazy seeing people I met in another place on the other side of the world. I’m back in London again here to speak at SMX on the tools panel with a bunch of smart people.”

2. What excites you the most about this industry? What makes you rage?

“The people in the SEO community are generally pretty awesome.

I love the people in this industry, they are far more generous and such than people in other industries that I’ve been a part of. For example, the music industry is nothing like this. What I specifically enjoy is how there’s no one set path to being an SEO and therefore everyone comes with very interesting life stories. I love the camaraderie. I love making new friends; I’m having a ton of fun.

What I specifically don’t like is how so many people offer conjecture as though it were fact. I also don’t like how we get stuck in a rut of having the same arguments over and over i.e. “inbound vs. SEO,” “is SEO dead?” “are links dead?,” “black hat vs. white hat” and the like. I also don’t like how so many people will essentially reword someone else’s post and then don’t cite the source. That really enrages me, but that is probably more a leftover hip-hop thing for me – it seems like everyone else is generally ok with idea theft.”

3. We are in a period of change in the SEO industry – what do people need to do to adapt to this change

“Well that’s the beauty of it, in SEO we are always inherently in a period of change. Really, the question is what change are you focusing on?

Right now Search and Social are rapidly converging and a lot of people want to ignore that and keep doing what they’ve been doing since 2008. Organic Search specifically is being called to grow up and sit at the adult table to do things like influence product decisions and drive digital strategies, but again a lot of people just don’t want to be responsible for that.

There’s a saying that once the rate of change outside of your organization is more than the rate of change inside your organization – the end is near.

So in light of what Google is forcing us to adapt to, what the overall digital community is forcing us to adapt to and what we as an industry are changing, the search marketers that don’t embrace change have a fast approaching expiration date.”

4. Tell me a little more about your new role and the title ‘inbound marketing’ – that’s your specialty so tell me more about why you are so passionate about this

“Well, really, me taking the title Director of Inbound Marketing is more me planting a flag as to where I stand in this argument. As a strong proponent with a voice in this industry, I like that I can help shape the perception of something new. However in actuality my role at iAcquire is Marketing Director for our brand because I control paid channels too, but as we grow I’ll be doing more client-facing work and running inbound marketing teams.

What I specifically love about Inbound Marketing is that most clients don’t really know what it is so you have a clean slate to explain it. Once you break it down, it’s clear that you need to have a large amount of control to complete your tasks. It’s clear that I need to influence strategy across a whole ecosystem whereas the way that people understand SEO they just assume I’m playing with meta tags and redirects and content is considered optional.”

5. How would you sum up inbound marketing and SEO (maybe a rap is on the way?)

“HA! I am not the SEO rapper! Inbound Marketing is the opportunity to educate and entertain your way into conversions through content strategy across free traffic channels. SEO is a portion of inbound marketing and generally focuses on and off page optimization, but as I see it definitely includes social media and content strategy as well. There’s a very fine line between the two, but I’d say that SEO uses other channels as tactics whereas inbound marketing using them as strategies.”

6.Have you seen any differences in US and UK marketing approaches to search and inbound marketing

“Yeah, in the UK they spell optimize with an S.”

7. The phrase ‘inbound’ gets a lot of stick – what’s your response? (the minute its mentioned people jump on it, say its commercial/hubspot/hype)

“I don’t really care. In general I think all of the arguments in our industry are a waste of time and I just want to do great work. I’m an inbound marketer and I actually do work in the real world, most of the people arguing about this haven’t actually gotten anything ranked outside of an SEO term in the last 4 years so they can’t relate to what people actually do the work go through. If you don’t want to be called an inbound marketer, don’t, stop talking and get back to work.”

8. Can you draw some parallels to your passion in music and your passion for the industry

“Sure, I’ve always strived to be really good at anything I do. I take pride in my work and push things forward. For example, I’m the first person to ever do the freestyle object guessing game blindfolded. I’m the first person (and still one of the few) to do really complicated full sentence rhyme scheme patterns for a whole song. So I guess I’m really into innovation and bringing new ideas to the table. You can see that in the stuff I’ve shared with the SEO community, like Keyword-Level Demographics and my Social Link Building approaches. In general I think I’m pretty good at seeing what is there and what isn’t and then creating it.”

9. What are you plans for 2012 with iAcquire?

“I have a lot of exciting things in the works actually. I’m personally most excited about expanding our offering and building new products. So you might already know about our product LinkDiagnosis. I’m making suggestions to our tech team who will be rebuilding that from scratch.

We recently brought my friend Josh Giardino (who you might remember wrote the “Googlebot is Chrome” article) aboard as Manager of R&D and I’m working on some awesome projects with him one of which is a Broken Link Index. I’m rolling out a ton of content, blog posts, studies, white papers, comic strips, cartoons, videos, the whole 9. I’m even toying with the idea of putting together a small conference or at least a big meetup.

The expansion of our offering is pretty exciting too because as of now we have mastered off page seo, but we’re doing more strategic stuff for clients and growing into a holistic SEO agency like what I described in the New SEO Process. So ultimately, I’ll be helping the link building team get better at what they do and leading the on page SEO and digital brand strategy teams. It’s my goal to build the absolute best team in the game.”

10. Having read some of your great articles recently. How do you do it! Any tips for upcoming bloggers and content writers out there?

“Thanks for saying that; I’m glad you’ve enjoyed them.

Really, I don’t have any tricks. I don’t have any ghostwriters. I don’t even have the time to do as much as I do and I’m definitely not as prolific as someone like John Doherty, Rand Fishkin or Danny Sullivan.

I also only try to write when I have something of value to truly add to the conversation and I try to do it exhaustively. So many people are saying the same thing over and over so find something that you are truly passionate about and you can bring something new to.

That said – the best way to do it is to do it.”

11. What’s your sign off message for the UK?

Why shoot the breeze about it, when you can be about it?

Enough said?

About the interviewer

Andy Betts has worked in search marketing from its conception in the UK. In the past 12 years Andy has worked for, and with, many of the world’s largest agencies and brands helping formulate marketing, business, and search strategies for companies such as Apple, HP, HSBC, United Airlines, Lexis Nexis, and Saxo Bank. Andy has also spent considerable time consulting in Europe, APAC, and in the USA working with Google, Performics, Publicis and Dentsu. Andy also consultants for many search and digital technology startups, agencies, and direct advertisers on sales and marketing, products and technology.

Yahoo Launches “Axis” a Visual Way of Searching Focussed on Devices

It is time for change people. Change in the search engines. After Bing and Google now Yahoo decided to bring in a whole new way of searching: Yahoo! Axis.

With Axis Yahoo! introduces a way of searching which is much more visual and, as Yahoo claims, with much more interaction, “all without ever leaving the page you are on.” (more…)

The EU Threatens Google, But Have They Got a Case..?

Google once again has to answer to the EU. Yesterday Commissioner Joaquin Almunia wrote a letter to Eric Schmidt containing four major ‘concerns’ that the EU has when it comes to their investigation of several antitrust complaints which were issued last year.

Almunia also posted the concerns online and in that same article seemed to be hinting at a deal with Google. This might mean the EU is not to certain about the complaints and looking at the complaints at first sight there is no need for Google to be scared of the consequences, even though some points really touch in the core of Google’s business efforts. (more…)

Linkdex Adds Ranking Checks For Baidu, Yandex & more

Every SEO wants to check his rankings. Even though the world of search is changing, rankings still play a big role when it comes to the everyday job of the SEO. Yes, we have Universal Results, yes, Search Plus Your World is playing a huge part in our visibility, but rankings still are an important relative key performance indicator.

And with the ever internationalizing world of search (we can see how important internationalization has become by all the great content coming from the International Search Summit last week for example), we want to know how we do in different part of the world, on different search engines, not just Google.

Linkdex has understood the importance of the combination of the both and has added Baidu, Yandex and Yahoo to the list of search engines you can track your rankings. It has also added language options, which means you can check these search engines in over 35 countries in multiple languages. (more…)

Google Launches Knowledge Graph: Direct (not SEO-able) Answers

At SMX London last Monday Amit Singhal was already talking about the direction Google was going in. He there gave the example of the Taj Mahal. Are you looking for information on the monument or the closest Indian restaurant with that name. Google wants to give the right answer on queries like that.

Last night Amit Singhal gave the same example in a blogpost which announced the launch of the “Knowledge Graph“, it is the actual roll out of the tests we saw last week. With Knowledge Graph Google wants to “help you discover new information quickly and easily.” Simply said: its about answers, not the links. At SMX Singhal also said “Google has always been about giving the best answer on search queries” and this is an extension to that given.

The data Google is showing is gathered from specific sources which means the SEOs can’t ‘touch’ it and will be part of the discussion on whether Google is ‘stealing’ traffic from sites.

What is it?

The Knowledge Graph is about connecting people, places and things and giving facts and data about the search you are doing. You are getting more information on the query than just the links to other sites. Google is actually giving you direct information in the SERPS.

The Knowledge Graph does a few things:

Find the right thing
Google figures out, based on your personalized data, what exactly you mean when you are looking for the Taj Mahal. But next to that they also show a box with results which could be about the other meanings of Taj Mahal.

Getting the best summary
Google says it can now better understand your query so it will give you facts on the search you are looking for and primarily shows you the data which fits your needs best. This is what we spotted last week as a test.

Deeper and broader
Finally Google says they give us more specific types of information, right in the search results.

How do they know?

Two questions arise: how does Google know what exactly we want and where do they get the data from?

To start with the first question: Google studies the users and looks at relationships, not just in sites but all entities together. They are taking the social graph and the link graph and are combining the data from there together. In short: they are tracking our every move to figure out what kind of results we would like to have returned. Are you looking for (Indian) food or restaurants a lot? Your “Taj Mahal” search will show you more information on the Indian restaurants close to you, while if Google has figured out you love travel or culture you will see more about the monument.

The second question is where do they get that information? Google itself says they primarily use public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook. But it could also be that the data comes from another site. Google says it “currently contains more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects.” And at Searchengineland Danny Sullivan noted that Amit Singhal has said: “Wherever we can get our hands on structured data, we add it”.

First step to the end of SEO?

In his post Singhal also points out this is “a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do.” Google is moving into the direction the Wall Street Journal was talking about: giving straight answers and ‘ignoring’ the regular ten blue links.

Is Google really moving away from the ten blue links and are we as website owners doomed? Is this the actual first step to the end of SEO as we know it?

According to Singhal at SMX this kind of traffic is not taking away traffic from most sites but some sites might lose some traffic. That sounds like trying to be politically correct and it reminds me of the things that were said about the ‘not provided’ in Google Anlaytics: they said it would be a small percentage, but it seems to be growing.

SEO will not ‘die’ over this, but it does mean that search is becoming much more about being visible within the results, you need to stand out, so the focus of many search marketers will not just be on ranking, but also on optimizing for the SERPS: making sure you stand out.

Google however is step by step changing search with first Search Plus Your World and now this. Whether or not they are changing it in the right direction remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure: they are far from done…

Find more on Techmeme, Searchengineland and Google’s official post

Forget Pagerank and Mozrank, Majestic Launches “Flow Metrics”

Linkbuilders love Pagerank and Mozrank. Even though Pagerank has no influence on rankings it shows us what a site and a link on that site can be “worth”. But is it the best way to figure that out?

Majestic SEO probably has the most insights on the worth of any link out there since they have the biggest database of links on the web. Majestic SEO feels Mozrank and Pagerank as well as the AC Rank they have been using could use some improvement. So they decided to develop a new quality metrics “Flow Metrics” with two “scores”: Citation Flow and Trust Flow. (more…)

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