Google announced yesterday that they’ll be changing how they track users across all of their different sites, including YouTube, Gmail, and the big G’s search engine. There is some concern from various places (including the Washington Post) that this is tracking that can’t be opted out of, but the truth is, you still have that option. It goes live March 1st, you can see all details here.
If you haven’t heard yet, some major, major sites are taking action to protest two major acts that are being run through congress. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) in the House and PIPA (Protect IP Act) in the Senate are both set up to change the internet in a huge way if they pass. Essentially – the freedom we enjoy to express ourselves and communicate freely online may be in jeopardy.
So Paul Christoforo and Ocean Marketing have gone viral. But even though they say bad marketing is good marketing, I think this particular instance is an example of bad marketing being bad marketing.
As I mentioned before, Google Gaydar was a “feature” that came from the search engine that wasn’t announced, but did catch the attention of many when it was noticed. This feature is part of a new adjustment to Google’s services, called by most: Google Best Guess.
Yes, that title is correct. Google has not made any announcement that I’ve heard about regarding this, but you can actually type a query into the search engine to find out what Google’s “gaydar” has determined.
Here’s my test of the latest Google Gaydar functionality:
So there you have it. Perhaps it’s accurate, perhaps it’s something one of the developers put in as an easter egg that got discovered, perhaps it’ll be gone tomorrow. But for right now it’s yet another Google tool that can be used freely from your computer.
So today Google put up a Les Paul theme for their new logo. And it’s interactive! I’m a guitarist, so I played with it a bit and found out this about it. All the “strings” are corded so that the notes go up as you play downwards. The reverse of what a normal guitar tablature does. The actual notes are as follows, going down: C, E on the top of the “G” of “Google”. Then in the middle section, on the left, G, B, G (an octave up), then another B an octave up on the bottom of the “G”. And then on the right, A, D, F#, then another A an octave up.
The button underneath is to record what you might be able to figure out. I noticed that there are some basic chords in place with the strings arranged as they are. Not every note is in place for all these chords, but the rough structure is as follows: a C major (minus the 5th) using the top two strings of the “G” of “Google”, a G major (minus the 5th) for the middle three strings and bottom string of the “G”, and then a D major over A (also known as D/A) for the strings on the right. It’s tricky to play them, but if you can work the mouse well you can play the chords nicely. Here’s a basic composition I put together.
I’m quite pleased with seeing Google put some music on the home page. Hope you have fun with it – if you make any particularly cool compositions, put the link to them in the comments!
In the effort to get links and spread word of your business online, many people can get a bit overzealous. Ryan Sammy put together an excellent list detailing the 7 deadly sins of content promotion. I’ve summarized them here, with my own input on it.
So I was up late and had YouTube going. Noticed a funky little button to the bottom right. ”1911? What’s that mean?” So I clicked it, of course. And it’s awesome. I highly recommend you try it out. Especially their review on the best viral pictures from 100 years ago.
Just a quick post to give a notice of one of Google’s fun additions to their sites. Aside from their open position for autocompleters, of course.
When working on a business, sometimes you get a bit sidetracked and don’t always keep up with some things. In this case, it’s been the blog. However, the site has a new look to it, and with it, some changes are to be made.
In the past, most local businesses never thought they could compete with major companies. The marketing budget needed to really make a similar impact was usually way out of their capabilities. However, with Google’s latest updates, it’s looking like the smaller business has a much better chance of staying within the public’s eyes.
Today Google’s made a major change in Google Places (known to many as Google Maps). The 7-box is no longer a separate entity, but is now merged with the full organic results. This is a game-changer for SEO.
This is pretty big news. Google’s just released (on 9/9/10) a new site, called the Google AdWords Small Business Center. This is a site dedicated to helping people learn more about how to use AdWords or how to improve existing accounts.
There are several lessons here, with tips and even a link to the AdWords Beginners’ Guide. It looks to be a good place for people to learn about AdWords, although the site by itself doesn’t appear to be fully comprehensive. However, they do include links to other pages, including a link that allows you to search for an AdWords Pro (such as myself, yes, I am an AdWords Pro) to help take care of all of the work involved in managing your AdWords account.
At any rate – if you’re having trouble with your AdWords account in any way, I recommend checking out Google’s new Small Business Center. It might give you the help you’re looking for.
As most everyone has noticed by this point, Google Instant is now live. Searches provide results real-time, making the things you’re searching for appear more quickly, and in some cases, allowing searchers to find other results they may not otherwise have discovered. There is a lot of speculation out there on how this will affect SEO.
This was something that had been coming, but it was unknown exactly when the date would be. Yahoo and Microsoft have made an alliance. It’s called the “Search Alliance”. Originally it was intended as a unification for paid advertisements, but it’s clear now that the unification is for both paid and organic listings; do a search on both Yahoo and Bing for a keyword phrase, and the results are now identical.
I’ve been taking a look at some of my competition lately and seeing their bragging about achieving first page ranking for keywords, and in some cases top position ranking for keywords. Well, for people who are looking to get SEO services from a company or an individual, be sure to keep some things in mind before being impressed by achievements such as these.
There’s a good list of things to double check (or to ask) when you see rankings like this in a portfolio:
How many results do you get for that keyword in the search engine? If you do a search in Google and get under 200,000 listings, there’s a good chance it’s very easy to rank for that keyword. There are exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, if no one’s competing for the keyword, it’s easy to rank for. But again – if no one’s competing for the keyword, chances are it’s not worth ranking for. We’ve got a few clients with keywords that are ranked on the first page that have search results numbering over 6,000,000.
What kind of traffic does that keyword get? There are different ways to learn about this, but you should see if the keywords that are being ranked highly actually get good traffic. You may have a number one position, but if it only gets two searches a month – is it really something that’s worth it? As always, there are exceptions to this rule (if you can close on one of those two searches and it’s worth six figures, that’d be worth it), but usually getting no traffic means the keyword is not worth as much.
What other keywords are ranked for that site? So they have shown a single keyword phrase for their SEO’d site. Is it the only one that’s ranked? A good SEO should be able to rank highly for multiple keywords. Ideally, multiple targeted keywords.
Is the SEO company’s site ranking for keywords? If the company claims to do SEO, it would make sense that they would rank for keywords themselves, correct? If you ask and they can show no good results for their own site in the search engines, be very cautious about trusting them with your own site.
When you hire someone for SEO work, they should be able to provide information on what keywords they are targeting and show you the results that it’s bringing. Having a particular ranking is worth nothing if you don’t see results from that position in the search engine listings. Check this list to see what those results are really worth, and if it’s good SEO or just easy SEO to put something into a portfolio.
Nothing really new here, but sometimes it’s good to see what the big guns think about search engine optimization. Does Google approve of SEO? Do they have an opinion on it? Good? Bad?
Well, they most certainly have an opinion on it. In fact, they even offer solid advice to anyone interested on the Google SEO page (a page with guidelines, within the Webmaster Tools pages).
It’s always nice to have SEO experts and pros answer some of the major questions any SEO might have. It appears that someone has done just that. Outspoken Media snagged a number of fairly big SEO experts and asked some great questions, in particular about link building.
It’s pretty lengthy, so in the words of the poster, grab a nice cup o’ joe and sit down to read through this set of jewels. There are plenty of SEO questions to see answered.
Guest blogs are a new area of content creation becoming more prevalent in the blogsphere nowadays. Is this something that is good for SEO? Or is it worthless for link building?
Google AdWords has a new tool they’re trying out. It’s called the AdWords Campaign Experiments (or ACE). It’s taking some testing that normally takes a while and making it faster. Read more »
One of Google’s new developments is the adding of another search element to their engine. Time. You can now search for a certain “freshness” of content in Google’s cache. Read more »
The news is out, Google is not a fan of Microsoft Windows. The main reason is security concerns, the vulnerability that is present with the hackability of the operating system. Read more »
Trying to show the results of SEO is not just doing a search on your targeted keywords and viewing the latest position. It’s more than just that. Read more »
As many blogs that get decent traffic know, you often get a lot of spammy comments on your posts, even when you have a decent anti-spam plugin or two. Well, there are other routes to go when you STILL get spam comments. And I’ve found a nice one. Read more »
Google’s making some changes to their standard search results, to include a left hand nav bar. This has made some people (including Business Insider) wonder if it’s to imitate what Bing already has in place – a side panel to have different links for images, videos, etc.
This change will affect how people view results in general, although Google’s advertising approach will likely not change heavily. We’ll have to see what the response is when they go fully live with these changes.
