Hold onto your virtual horses, Internet. Google’s finally voiced an opinion about its secret army of quality raters, delivered to you courtesy of Matt Cutts himself. Good news: according to a new Webmaster Help video uploaded to YouTube, their recommendations do not directly affect your website.

Supposedly.

Google’s been mightily “hush-hush” about the role of quality raters and how their opinions affect website positions in the SERPs. That’s why this new video infuses a, much-needed breath of fresh air into an otherwise murky aspect of G’s inner workings.

Oh yeah, and a little leaked info from the quality raters themselves doesn’t hurt, either.

Understanding Google’s Quality Rater

There are thousands of Google raters floating around out there. Too many to count. That’s why Google outsources the hiring and management of these employees to independent firms such as Lionbridge and Leapforce. The raters don’t work directly for Google per se, and things stay much cleaner that way. I’m also assuming that keeping these raters at arm’s length does a good job of protecting G’s trade secrets as well.

If you want to know about pay and working conditions, you can head over to the Google rater section of the WAHM forum. Employees discuss the ins and outs of the program and dish about all the juicy details that the work entails. For example, raters must pass a highly detailed exam before acceptance into the program. They also receive a fair hourly wage, but (this is the important part) they must keep up with a rigorous workload of fast-paced search page analysis.

Upon acceptance into the program, raters are given one of two tasks. In the new video, Cutts goes into detail about the first kind of rater assignment. Raters are typically given two sets of search result pages (a traditional list of ten results) to compare in a side-by-side analysis. Google instructs the raters to indicate whether they prefer the left-hand side of the search results or the right-hand side. Sounds simple, right? Maybe so, but try doing it in volume.

The second task for raters is all about keywords. This assignment falls on the more tedious end of the spectrum. Raters are furnished with a keyword and a URL. They’re charged with assessing the relevance of the given term in relation to the URL’s destination. Keep in mind for this task – they do have the option of marking a specific URL as spam. Remember that – it’ll be important later on.

How Rater Feedback is Weighted

Cutts’ video also clears up some widely held misconceptions about quality raters that have been floating around the ‘net for quite some time now. Cutts first points out that Google instructs evaluation raters (“quality raters”) to judge page quality and rate navigation, among other things.

However, warns Cutts, “Those people don’t influence the algorithm in any direct sense.”

When raters are given the above-mentioned side-by-side analysis task, their opinions do not directly affect the websites in the samples. This is precisely where many people get confused into thinking raters are somehow “penalizing” their websites. It’s simply not so.

When a quality rater indicates he or she doesn’t care for a particular website, that opinion doesn’t cause site to tank. Instead, the aggregate of raters’ opinions becomes data Google uses to tweak the algorithms themselves and not individual websites – see the distinction? With billions upon billions of websites on the ‘net, it makes more sense to use the data to tweak things on a macro level.

Takeaways

Google has a super-secret book of guidelines for its raters to use while they work. In an act of incredible Internet espionage, some savvy marketers got a hold of the leaked manual and posted the info all over the Web. Unfortunately, Google acted fast to remove the offending material via a series of uber threatening emails. All this scandal makes Cutts’ remark at the end of his video ridiculously exciting – he says that Google may release the coveted rater guidelines to the public at some point in the near future.

One of the most important aspects of the job that raters are talking about in the forum is the speed with which they must complete their assignments. Most remark that reading the rich text snippets listed below each page (as opposed to visiting each website) when comparing search result pages side-by-side is the only way to realistically get through the work volume and keep the gig.

For you, this means that the snippet listed with every one of your ranked pages must be relevant to the query for which you rank. Also, it must be grammatically flawless and highly interesting. Keeping things spam-free will work in your favor as well.

Bottom line: Google raters’ answers won’t directly affect your website’s placement in the SERPs – unless enough of them mark your site as spam.

All this info means, essentially, that Google raters do matter – their macro-level data affects the way algorithms are constructed and altered. On a micro level, however, if your website is not spam, you really have nothing fear. Save all that pent-up anxiety for the next big algo update instead.

About the author: Nell Terry is a tech news junkie, fledgling Internet marketer and staff writer for SiteProNews, one of the Web’s foremost webmaster and tech news blogs. She thrives on social media, web design, and uncovering the truth about all the newest marketing fads that pop up all over the ‘net. Find out more about Nell by visiting her online portfolio at Content by Nell.

To make a success of your online business, you cannot ignore social networking sites, otherwise also known as Web 2.0 sites. The biggest, of course, is Facebook which now boasts 1 billion regular users. Twitter is the second biggest network followed by the newest, Google+.

Google+ was formed in 2011. After a succession of forays by Google into social networking, it has currently settled on Google+. Today it has 400 million users with about a 100 million of them being active users on a per month basis.

Following the recent Google search algorithm changes known as Google Panda and Google Penguin, more emphasis is now given to Web 2.0 traffic. In other words, if you wish your website to rank higher in Google, you need to get more traffic from sites such as Google+. Google monitors all links to websites and will boost rankings of all sites with deep Web 2.0 links.

Google+ also offers an identity service. It insists only real people sign up. Once it has your real profile, it will, if you wish, verify your website in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) by attaching your Google+ profile photo whenever your site appears in a SERP.

Google will boost your site’s ranking if it is verified by Google+. So, for any serious website owner or blogger, it is important to be part of Google+. Too many internet users, the fact that Google strongly discourages the use of online pseudonyms seems unfair. They argue that since the privacy controversy is still not settled, revealing too much of yourself online poses a threat and should be avoided. From Google’s point of view, real people posting good material online will ultimately boost their own credibility.

Google+ is not only the newest social network, but it has also brought with it some important and unique changes to the social networking scene. For instance, Google+ makes it a breeze to segment your friends. On Facebook, if you posted something, each one of your friends and perhaps friends of friends can see what you have done.

In Google+, you can be more selective about who can see what you are doing. You can segment your friends into a limitless number of “circles” (short for” circle of friends”) if you wish. So, for instance, if you wanted to show photos of what you did on the weekend to only some of your friends and not everyone (because some friends might be work related), then you can do so by segmenting these friends into separate circles. So, you could have a “non-work friends” circle and a “work friends” circle.

This simple, yet ingenious feature means that you can target your audience more accurately. You could compose messages in a way that targets each circle precisely with what they want to hear from you. Another good feature is that the people you connect to do not know which of your circles they belong to. All they know is that they have a connection with you. So you can go ahead and name your circles whichever way you wish.

One other notable feature in Google+ is the “Hangout” where you can invite circle friends to participate in a live video session. This is a very powerful feature especially for conducting business.

There are many interesting features in Google+ which are beyond the scope of this article and I am sure there will be others coming along in the future which will enhance the capabilities of Google+ even further.

With Google Search continuing to dominate the search arena and further consolidate its power, you would be unwise to disregard Google+.

In Google’s current ranking algorithm, Google+ is just one factor amongst others, but, nonetheless an important component, you would be ill advised to ignore if you wish your site to rank higher in Google SERPs.

To your social media marketing success!

About the author: Hanif Somani, Ph.D is an Internet Marketer and Forex Trader. Hanif obtained his Ph.D. from the University of London in a scientific discipline and is passionate about conveying complex ideas to his audience in a simple but not simpler way. Hanif believes that anyone can succeed in their endeavors if they first obtain the knowledge and then apply it correctly in an incremental way. Knowledge is the key to success and this is what Hanif is happy to convey and share. He writes regularly on all aspects of Online Income Sources which you can find on his blog at Making Money Online.

Do you wonder if your webpages will ever make it to the top of Google? Have you bought into SEO tools, programs and recommendations, guaranteed to bring success, only to find they fail to deliver? Do you feel there must be a hidden key factor we all have been missing in the Google algorithm?

In this article, the hypothesis is put forward that Google treats home pages preferentially to internal pages: the homepage of a website receives a previously unrecognized boost in positioning that internal pages do not.

The Google Algorithm

Google includes at least 200 signals with different weightings in its positioning algorithm. They are grouped into on-page and off-page factors. The on-page factors relate to the words used in the visible text and underlying coding whereas the off-page factors relate to incoming links.

There is evidence that off-page factors carry more weight than on-page factors. The Adobe homepage, for example, is on the top Google.com results page for the keyword ‘website’ even though the keyword does not appear on the webpage or in the underlying coding. There are seven billion competing webpages for this keyword. The Adobe page is at the top because of the quantity and quality of incoming links and the anchor (linking) text that include the keyword.

In this article, compelling evidence is put forward indicating the top factors in the Google algorithm include:

1. Website authority.

2. Authority boost for homepages competing for keywords.

3. Webpage authority.

In their book “Search Engine Optimization Secrets,” two highly-acclaimed SEO experts state that modern search engines rank pages by a combination of domain authority and page authority.

What is Page Rank?

Google has always placed great emphasis on link popularity in its algorithm.

Page Rank is named after Larry Page, one of the two Google co-founders. It provides an indication of the total value of incoming links to all webpages in the Google index. Google considers these values to be the authority or popularity of the web page. Page Rank is a metric of non-specific authority.

A page rank indicator is available on Internet Explorer with an active Google toolbar. It indicates the page rank of the webpage currently active in the browser. Google calculates page rank in three steps:

1. Every link in the Google index to a web page is given a value according to the page rank of the page giving the link. This is then divided by the number of outgoing links on that page.

2. The value of all the links to the webpage is then summed.

3. All webpages indexed by Google are placed in an authority table so those with the most incoming ‘link juice’ are at the top – page rank 10 – and those with no links have page rank 0. Page rank is on a logarithmic scale.

If page rank is to a base 10, for every webpage with PR10 there would be 100 with PR8, and 10 million pages with PR0.

Positioning of a webpage on Google for a keyword depends on its non-specific authority and its ‘relevance’ for the keyword. Relevance depends on the visible and code content of the webpage and the anchor text used in the incoming links.

We need to be aware of three additional facts when looking at the importance of page rank in the Google algorithm.

1. Page rank data provided by Google ranges from 0 to 10 whereas Google uses an unknown number of decimal places. We may see two pages as having PR3, but the first may have a PR3.99 and the second PR3.01: The first has nearly 10-fold the authority of the second.

2. Updated page rank information is typically released at between 3 month and 12 month intervals.

3. Page rank information is three to six months out-of-date on the day that it is published by Google.

Domain Authority and Page Rank

Google tells us that “page rank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites.”

Clearly, page rank currently relates to websites and not just to webpages. Most internal webpages on a website have a link to the homepage which means the page rank of the homepage is the best available reflection of the page rank (or link juice) coming into the website. Homepage page rank can, therefore, be used as a helpful metric of domain authority. Domain authority has been defined in several ways, but homepage page rank has the advantage of being directly available from Google.

There are many webpages with low page rank on the top Google results page for highly competitive keywords. This has misled many to assume page rank can be of little, if any, importance in the Google algorithm. The majority of these highly-positioned low PR webpages, however, are on websites with significant domain authority – homepage page ranks of at least four. This explains how webpages on popular websites such as Wikipedia tend to have high positioning, even if their page ranks are low. Domain authority, therefore, has greater importance than webpage authority, although webpage authority continues to contribute to positioning.

Hypothesis: homepages competing for a keyword are given a boost in the Google algorithm. About 30 percent of webpages on the top Google results page for keywords are homepages, which is grossly disproportionate to the estimated number of webpages. There are an estimated 650 million websites and a trillion webpages on the Internet.

Page Rank analysis of the top 10 webpages and their associated homepages for 1,000 keywords repeated over five Google country domains (U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and India) demonstrate website authority and webpage authority remain two top factors in the Google algorithm. This functional analysis also suggests homepages competing for keywords are given a positioning boost.

The results of the analysis of 1,000 keywords on five Google domains: 5,000 keywords and nearly 50,000 top 10 webpages can be viewed. The simple but unique tabulated format of presenting the page ranks of the webpages and their associated homepage page ranks on the top Google results page for a list of keywords clearly shows that Google must be giving a boost to the effective page ranks of homepages competing for keywords. Of these nearly 50,000 top webpages, 64 percent are on websites with a minimum homepage page rank of four and a further 30 percent are themselves homepages. Only six percent are on websites with homepage page rank of three or less or they were not themselves homepages competing for the keywords.

From these results, it is suggested that when a homepage with page rank of four or less is competing for a keyword, its effective page rank is boosted to about 4.5. This boost levels the playing field to some degree – like the handicap system in golf. It means the homepages of local business websites with low domain authority have a chance of successfully competing against the internal webpages of directory websites that have moderate domain authority.

The Implications of the HomePage Boost Hypothesis?

1. For new and poorly performing websites in particular, it means SEO efforts should focus on the homepage to maximize the website’s potential.

2. Keyword difficulty techniques and programs should include the homepage positioning boost in addition to domain authority and webpage authority data to avoid underestimating the difficulty.

3. The chance of a new webpage achieving top page positioning on Google for a keyword will be influenced by whether it is the homepage or an internal page.

The hypothesis that homepages receive a boost in positioning over internal pages is new. It has the potential to significantly impact search engine optimization. The hypothesis can be easily put to the test without involving software.

About the author: David Viniker MD FRCOG has 30 years of experience with computer applications for medical education and he has applied the principles of evidence based clinical practice to SEO. http://www.keywordseopro.com/

Google+ can play an essential role in your social media strategy, but if you are not managing it properly then you will not see the results you hope for. The time and energy you put into sites like Facebook and Twitter should also be divided into your Google+ community if you expect to have any success with it.

You might only have a small community, but it is still important to be actively engaged if you want to grow your following and get your brand’s page to pop up more often in search results.

Here are five ways that you can form a better strategy for Google+ so that you can start bringing in the benefits of being an active member of that social community.

Stay on Top of Notifications

When you sit down to check your social media each day, make sure that you are going through your notifications on Google+. You will see who has shared your posts, added you to their circles, shared a post with you or mentioned your company in a comment or post.

If they share something you post, thank them. If they share something with you or leave a comment, take time to read it and respond. If they added you to their circles, find a circle to add them to on your end.

Do a Search for Your Brand and Keywords

Another way to stay on top of your Google+ community is to keep an “ear” out for what people are saying about your brand and the industry in general. You can do a search that will bring up results of pages, posts, people and hangouts that contain your search terms. You can also filter it down so that you only get results from Google+.

Get the Ripple Effect

Google+ Ripples was introduced in 2011 and can show you how your Google+ posts are spread through user sharing. The ripples of any public post can be viewed by clicking on “View Ripples” on the drop down-menu. You will see who has shared your content and how the content is being spread. This kind of insight into which posts are being shared most often can help you know what type of content you should be focusing onto get the most benefit.

Talk About Other Brands and People

Like you, other businesses and entrepreneurs are looking for any mention of their name on Google+. To help get noticed, mention other people and brands in your posts. Link to other blogs, business owners, community members, etc. Those people and businesses will get a notification that they were mentioned. There is a good chance that they will reciprocate, leave a comment, +1 it or another beneficial action.

Set Up a Hangout

Google+ makes it easy to interact with others and even gives you the option for some face-to-face chats with a Hangout. These offer great opportunities to have a Q&A session with customers or clients or have a casual chat with people who share similar interests.

Google+ is an important part of social media and shouldn’t be overlooked. As you start to become more involved with the community, you will be able to see great growth and an increase in your brand awareness.

How have you made sure that your Google+ community is getting enough attention? What is your routine for managing your page?

About the author: Dawn Pigoni of Be Social Worldwide is a certified social marketing specialist and a social media virtual assistant. Dawn offers superb social networking, social marketing and social bookmarking to WAHMs, Small Business Owners, Internet Marketers, Affiliate Marketers, and Coaches who desire to bring stunning internet presence through social networking to their businesses. Get Dawn’s free report, Social Networking today & see how she can assist you with being Social Worldwide!

Google Plus is a social networking site launched by Google in 2011. It now has approximately 250 million users and is growing in popularity. Google Plus is similar to Facebook but yet different in several ways. One major difference is that you can organize your friends and followers into separate “Circles” so you can post appropriate messages to the right people. It is not just one mass posting.

With its many features and differences, Google Plus can seem a bit complicated and confusing so below are ten tips to help you use Google Plus to its maximum efficiency.

1. Profile – As always, take advantage of your profile area. You want to establish your personal identity but also connect your personal profile with your business. Instead of using your company logo for your avatar, use a picture of yourself. This will establish you as an actual person and give you a head start for building the relationships needed for your online business. Showcase what your business can do for people in the “About” section. Highlight your business but keep your personal identity evident as well.

2. Hangouts – This is one feature that separates Google Plus from Facebook and other social networking sites. The Hangouts feature allows you to connect, by video, with up to ten people at one time. This is great for meetings, training, demonstrations, webinars, e-classes, etc. Use this tool with creativity and grow your business.

3. Categorize with Circles – Another advantage of using Google Plus is their “Circles” feature. This allows you to categorize your followers, which in turn allows you to send the appropriate messages to the appropriate groups of people. No more mass posting and sending irrelevant messages to people. You can separate your followers into customers, family, trainees, etc. This is another way that Google Plus has come out ahead for networking.

4. Sparks – Yet another great feature of Google Plus is Sparks. This handy tool lets you enter a keyword and an alert will be sent to you whenever any content on this subject is posted. This is a great way to search for, and find relevant and interesting content to share.

5. Shorten Your URL – Be sure to shorten your URL as you probably won’t want to use the default link Google assigns to you. To do this, you can go to gplus.to and choose the nickname for your URL. I use my company name but some people prefer to use their actual name.

6. Invite People to Your Circles – In your account you will see a suggestion list, provided by Google, of people to invite to your circles. Make a habit of going through these suggestions and inviting different people to the appropriate circle. More people than not will accept your invitation and it helps in building an effective network.

7. Drag and Drop – You can easily drag and drop photos, links, videos, etc. from your desktop to your Google Plus comment box. This allows you much creativity to create memorable and unique posts.

8. Google Notifications Window – This feature is helpful because it allows you to comment right in the window. You do not have to click over to a website to share a comment. You can also scroll through to see older and/or newer notifications. This can be a great timesaver.

9. Check Your Google Plus Settings – There are many notification options available to you. You can opt to get notified when someone mentions you or adds you to their circle. There are several options available to you so be sure to check all the ones that apply.

10. Use Mashable – Mashable is a news source that will keep you abreast of all Google’s features, updates, and other digital social media news as well. This will allow you to make the most of your Google Plus and social media tactics.

Although Google Plus is not yet the powerhouse that Facebook is, it has many outstanding features and uses that could make it a very effective component in your social networking agenda.

About the author: Don’t be one of the 95% of people who fail at their online business. Terri Seymour can help you make money online. Find out how to increase your traffic and sales with her popular “How to Build Your Online Business” eBook for FREE at: ==> http://www.SeymourProducts.com

Never before (except perhaps in the baneful reviews of the box office bomb Happy Feet Two), have penguins been so universally despised as in the latest iteration of Google’s algorithm modifications. If you thought Farmer had ploughed you into the ground and Panda had eaten your most successful shoots, the Penguin will ice your SEO efforts and freeze your income. To beat that Penguin into submission apply these tips:

It’s All About Quality – Even though there has been more than enough public discussion about what constitutes quality and depth in writing articles, it’s very obvious what constitutes poor quality and shallowness. Any spun or transparently rewritten articles are going to attract the full wrath of the Penguin From Hades, so make sure that your content is eternally fully unique and well-written.

Limit Your Links – Too many links within a page are a clear trigger for Penguin’s bots to kick you down to Antarctica so keep the number of links to an absolute minimum and always integrate them logically and in a reader-friendly manner within your text, never in a list of links plunked into a sidebar.

Keep Your Links High Up – Above the fold is the critical place for links to be placed as they bear the most weight as well as attract the most reader attention. Penguin appreciates high up links and is not so kind to those which are dumped into a footer or at the end of an article.

Drop the Dropped Domains – One of the old standby SEO strategies is to pick up dropped domains to benefit from istorical links or PR and Google’s little polar bird is completely up to speed on this ploy so avoid it like a Penguin plague.

Never Stop Validating – Ensuring that your site is completely free from validation errors and each page is of a strictly limited file size to ensure easy loading is critical to keeping that tuxedo-wearing little bird happy and chirping away… if Penguins chirp, that is.

Stop Worrying About Negative SEO – Only in the most extreme cases do you have to be concerned about one of your rabidly vicious competitors setting up a few thousand links pointing to your site overnight to get Penguin to target you. Not only is it a whole lot of work for very little result, but the Googleplex has very few birdbrains so they’ll see through that.

Fry Up Your on Page Spam – Hawaiians believe that fried Spam is delectable, so go ahead and fry all the spam you currently have. That equates to: hidden text, keyword stuffing, thin content, cloaking, paid links, link spam, and the rest of the naughty black hat stuff which is nothing more than rancid canned meat product that is toxic to Penguins.

Bad Link, Bad, Bad Link – Come on, you know which of your links are nasty, so just go ahead and kill them now. Keeping them alive on your pages will do nothing but cause the evil Penguin Penalty to rear its ugly head from the snow and ice.

Know When to Start Over – Perhaps your current site is so riddled with Penguin Pathogens that it just may be at the unrecoverable stage. In these fairly rare cases you might be better off to just can the entire site and start completely fresh at a new URL. If you do take this extreme step, ensure that you are not carrying over any of your old calamitous habits, as well as not a single iota of any text or image content from the dearly departed site.

File the Google Feedback Form – If you think that you have been penalized by the Penguin through no fault of your own don’t listen to the paranoid hyperbola on the various SEO forums and go ahead and file The Form. There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that filing The Form will “out” your site so file with no fear and confront that rascally Penguin.

You can live happily with Penguin. Just try not to mind the ammonia odor!

About the author: Hal Licino is the author of two books and an e-mail marketing advocate for Benchmark E-mail, a global email marketing provider.

Google went longer than usual without sharing its normally monthly lists of algorithm changes and “search quality highlights,” but finally, at the end of last week, the company put up one giant list covering changes it made in June and July. In all, there were 86 changes (not counting the ones Google blogged about separately), and we’ve been analyzing them since.

As usual, “quality” continues to be a major focus for Google, but I see three major themes in Google’s latest batch of changes, that give us an idea of what Google has really been focusing on: natural language understanding, quick answers and a decreased dependence on keywords. Really, these all go together hand in hand. All in all, this means Google is giving users less reasons to click through to other sites and reducing the value of keyword-driven search engine optimization, which could make things more difficult for your SEO strategy.

Getting Better At Natural Language

Make no mistake. Google is getting better at understanding natural language, and this summer, Google has made a lot of changes (improvements, according to Google) in supporting and detecting it. There were ten items on the big list directly related to natural language, and others a little more indirectly related.

Google has improved support and/or detection for natural language for its dictionary feature, its time feature, its movie showtimes feature, its currency conversion feature, its flight status feature, its unit conversion feature, its sunrise/sunset feature, and its baseball scores/schedules feature. It’s now better at answering questions like: “What time is it in India?” or “What is $500 in Euros?” or “What is 5 miles in kilometers?”

Decreased Dependence on Keywords

Directly related to natural language, are Google’s improvements in how it treats synonyms of words. Five additional changes from the list had to do with synonyms specifically. Google says it has improved the use of query synonyms in ranking.

“Now we’re less likely to show documents where the synonym has a different meaning than the original search term,” the company said.

Google says it has also improved synonyms inside concepts, improved efficiency by not computing synonyms in certain cases, changed how its using synonyms to better generate accurate titles for web results, and updated its synonym systems to make it less likely it will return adult content when users aren’t looking for it.

The point is that Google is further distancing itself from having to rely on keywords to give you relevant results. This has been a key goal of Google’s throughout the years, and is why Google is so proud of its Knowledge Graph offering.

It’s worth noting, however, that as Google understands natural language more and more, it is able to give you the information you seek more and more, meaning you’ll have less of a reason to click through to a third-party site. That scares some webmasters, who rely on Google for traffic.

If you peruse the list of natural language-related changes, you’ll see that they’re all related to features where Google gives you direct (or quick) answers right from the search results page.

Giving Users The Answers

That brings us to the next major theme of Google’s recent changes: Answers. A whopping 23 of the changes from the list were related to Google’s project “Answers,” which consists of these types of results. If Google is giving users the answers they are seeking without making users take an extra step (of clicking through to another site), it’s doing its job right, as far as the user is concerned. Users just want to find info, and the quicker the better.

On the webmasters’ side of things, it’s a little more complicated than that, however. The better Google gets at this, and the more topics Google can cover with these answers, the more sites will potentially lose Google traffic.

Then There are Acquisitions

Of course, Google isn’t only facilitating this kind of thing with algorithm updates, but also with acquisitions. Google now has a wealth of restaurant reviews, courtesy of its acquisition of Zagat, for example. Now, Google is adding Frommer’s to the acquisition pile. Frommer’s is a travel guide brand, which gives Google a lot more travel content.

Some are saying this will cause antitrust issues for Google, and the company was certainly scrutinized plenty the last time it made a major travel-related acquisition in ITA Software. Ultimately, that acquisition was approved, as was the Zagat acquisition. Still, Google has been met with considerably more antitrust scrutiny since then (now there’s a new probe in India).

All of this stuff, combined with the Knowledge Graph, Search Plus Your World (Google’s largely Google+-based personalization features), and now Gmail in search results (only in limited trial at this point) points to more of user’s time spent on Google’s products, and less on third-parties’. It also means it’s going to get harder to get into Google’s traditional, organic search results for many types of queries.

For more coverage of Google’s latest list of changes, read:

Google Algorithm Changes For June, July Finally Released

Here’s What Google Has Been Doing For Quality (And Panda) For The Past Two Months

Google Reveals More Mobile Search Improvements

10 Natural Language Search Improvements Google Has Recently Made

Google Moves Further Away From Keyword Dependence

23 Recent Changes Google Made To Give You Better Quick Answers

Google Reveals Some Recent Changes To How It Ranks Results

About the Author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

Follow Chris on Twitter, on StumbleUpon, on Pinterest and/or on Google: +Chris Crum.

At Google I/O last month, Google revealed what could be the beginning of the future of how you use Google . Google Now was revealed as one of several prongs in a shift in mobile search strategy that Google has started with its latest version of its Android operating system – Jellybean. One of the most interesting things about it is that it really speeds up search by eliminating the need for it.

It’s going to be a long time before you no longer need a search engine at all, but Google’s goal with Google Now is to get you the information you need before you even have to search for it. It does this through personalization, requiring you to allow it access to certain personal information (things like location, search history, etc.). While Google Now only has a handful of “cards” – the types of information it will push to you in this fashion – the company has made it clear that it intends to greatly expand the number of situations where Google Now will become your personal assistant. This looks to be a major part of where search, or information consumption, is headed. As Google and competitors progress in their mission, the rest of us will no doubt learn a lot of things along the way. If you’re a marketer or a business owner, perhaps there’s already a great deal to learn from Google Now.

Mobile marketing company Globys, who works with carriers on leveraging customer data for personalized marketing has already seen plenty of lessons to take away from the product. We had a conversation with Lara Albert, Vice President, Global Marketing at Globys about it.

“Google Now is innovative in that it will be pro-active in delivering context-relevant information,” Albert tells WebProNews. “One of the most important things that Google Now brings to light is the ability to understand and anticipate user needs as well as the ability to act intelligently based on that understanding.”

“Brands have a lot of information about their customers, but in many cases they don’t have the tools to harness the data in a way that enables immediate insight and action,” she adds. “It’s time for brands to leverage what they know about their customers to engage them in more meaningful and valuable ways. And mobile is a powerful channel for doing so in that the device allows for such a personal and highly relevant means of engagement relevant to other marketing channels.”

Must brands build their own mobile apps to tap into the Google Now-like experience of delivering what customers want as they want it, or can they take advantage of existing apps that consumers are already using?

Albert thinks whether to build an app or use third-party apps is not the first question brands should be asking.

“The first question to ask is ‘what is my goal?’” she says. “By defining your objectives, you can then ask how mobile fits into the overall marketing picture.”

“Every marketer is interested in influencing customer behaviors in ways that align with a financial objective, whether that’s to increase revenue, for example, or build customer loyalty,” Albert adds. “Think of a department store focused on getting loyal customers to buy more when they are at their stores. An app can deliver an alert notifying of a sale on a customer’s most frequently purchased brands and the location of the item when they’re in the actual store. The alert may also recommend an item that similar customers have purchased in the past.”

“Or consider an airline focused on a life cycle management strategy to build brand loyalty, they can engage customers throughout the purchase cycle and beyond,” she continues. “What about an e-commerce company trying to motivate fans to create and share viral promotions? For each of these examples, brands should be using a data-driven approach to make their marketing more relevant – and let’s face it – more effective in driving a desired action.”

“Brands can leverage Google Now or other apps for awareness or attracting new customers, but for engaging existing customers – a branded app that collects, analyzes and delivers thoughtful, relevant, context-driven information will be more effective,” she says.

We asked Albert how she thinks brands be able to take advantage of Google Now itself.

“I would compare ads integrated with Google Now or another a third-party app as more akin to traditional online marketing – more like banner ads meant to increase brand awareness or to acquire customers,” Albert suggests. “Where mobile can really shine is in engagement with existing customers.”

“A branded app is a great opportunity to make the most of mobile’s strengths,” she says. “Think of the difference between getting a blast SMS from a local car dealership about a test-drive event vs. getting a notice about a promotion on a specific car model via your Volvo app which has been sending regular notifications and discounts for oil changes, tire rotations, etc. (and which has informed Volvo that your car is four years old and you have a pattern of purchasing a car every five years). Which offer are you going to be more receptive to versus considering it as spam?”

“Mobile apps allow brands to do more because they can collect data and integrate that information with other data such as a customer’s purchase history, loyalty program profile, etc.,” Albert concludes. “The real power of mobile engagement lies in the intelligent analysis of data from different sources and the ability to act on that data in real-time with contextually relevant communication.”

Perhaps the biggest obstacle for brands to overcome with this kind of marketing is getting customers to actually allow the kinds of settings required to gain certain data (location, for example). There are plenty of mobile device users who aren’t all that comfortable enabling this kind of information retrieval, but a lot of big tech and social brands making use of such settings is likely deteriorating the resistance to some extent. Google would be at the forefront of such brands, and with Google Now, the company may just be able to rip a giant chunk out of the barrier, especially once it is expanded on to a greater number of devices.

Google Now is only in its earliest of stages. Just wait until Google gets Glass involved.

About the author: Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow Chris on Twitter, on StumbleUpon, on Pinterest and/or on Google: +Chris Crum.

I recently did a site audit for a client who was wondering why they were having a hard time showing up in Google. When I read through the information they sent me and took a quick look at their website, it was obvious to me what the problem was: They simply didn’t deserve to be there.

Let me explain…

They have a fairly small local company that sells some common but specific types of office furniture. While they have a niche for the type of furniture they sell, for the most part it’s nothing that you can’t buy at most of the large office-supply stores such as Office Depot and Staples.

In the information they sent to me, they told me that they don’t do much (if any) marketing. Their website didn’t look horrible, but it had lots of technical issues. The category and product pages were very sparse, with very little information about the products, and nothing beyond the typical manufacturer’s description. The company had never built a brand for this website because it was one of a few sites they owned that sold slightly different lines of products. And — more important — I couldn’t find any unique selling proposition (USP). Oh, sure, they said that they had great customer service, but then, I don’t know of any business that says they have crappy customer service!

To get them to understand what they were up against, I showed them what the organic Google search results were made up of for a general phrase relating to one of the products they sold. For the most part, Google was showing mainly huge, major brands showing up on Page 1. If you think about it from Google’s point of view, why would they show this site’s product page before the ones they were currently showing? There was nothing unique or compelling about the site or what it was offering. There was nothing that set them apart from the others selling the same exact products at similar prices. Plus, they were an unknown entity compared to the big stores that everyone knows about due to their expensive marketing efforts.

Google Loves Diversity

What I noticed (and have noticed for many years) is that Google generally likes to show different types of pages within their search results. So sometimes you’ll see a page that is a directory of other sites, and one that is a main category page, one that is for a specific product, etc. But for the most part there will be something useful on the pages that they show first. At least, that’s what they shoot for — something that goes above and beyond a simple manufacturer’s description of a product that is seen on every site that sells the product. And something that perhaps the other sites on the first page didn’t have.

Big Brands Burst to the Top

For my product search, Office Depot came up No. 1 with a great page containing tons of different types and styles of the product as well as a way to compare them all. It’s also a trusted brand that people recognize and would expect to see showing up early in the search results.

Staples came next, with a page that wasn’t quite as comprehensive as Office Depot’s. And in all honesty it wasn’t much better than what my client’s site had on their main landing page for this type of product. The difference, however, was that Staples has spent millions marketing themselves and people know of them and link to them. Where they have a toolbar PageRank of 5, the page from the site I was reviewing had no toolbar PageRank at all (due to a combination of technical issues and there being very few other sites that link to this particular site). Because links are one of Google’s most important measures of quality, this one could not compete with a large brand that contains links naturally.

Showing next were the shopping results. My client did have a shopping feed, but their items didn’t seem to show up. Within the feeds that were showing up, again, most of them were recognizable names, and most also had 5-star reviews attached to them. It was pretty obvious that those were the ones that Google tended to show first.

Next in the regular organic results was a Walmart page for one specific product of the type I had searched for. But it also listed many other types on the page with nice large graphics, prices, comparisons and reviews. That one was a much better page to show than the site I was reviewing — it was easy on the eye and very comprehensive.

Next came an Amazon specific-product page. They too have branded themselves as a major company you can trust, and therefore they have a high number of links giving their product page a high toolbar PageRank.

Home Depot was next to show a specific type of the product, which also had high reviews. In fact, 20 reviews were listed right there on the page, which is extremely helpful to people looking to buy.

The next result was not a large brand! It was a smaller company’s home page that Google was likely showing because they specialize in selling only the very specific type of product I was searching for. Their home page had built up a good amount of link equity, which was probably why it was the page that Google chose to show. Not only that, but they had set themselves apart from the other sites I had seen thus far by having some cool videos about their specialized products. (Sadly, other than the videos, the site had done a lot of keyword stuffing, but hadn’t yet got caught by Google’s Panda/Penguin!)

The next few sites were OfficeMax, an eBay reviews page, and another site that specializes in the product. Then there was a page from a site that was really ugly, but it had a lot of information regarding sizes and pricing that was not on many of the other sites.

Eventually, on Page 3 of my search results, I found a page from the site I was reviewing. Given the zero amount of marketing they had done compared to their competitors, and taking all of the above into consideration, Google got it right. Most people would likely have preferred to see the pages that were in the top 10 over my client’s site.

What to Do?

I had many recommendations for this client. First, they had to fix the technical errors that were keeping them from getting ahead no matter what else they did. Next, I explained how they needed something in addition to the boilerplate text that every other site that sold those products used. Perhaps they could include additional information of their own. They could include recommendations as to who might want each particular product. They could also allow their customers to write their own reviews of the products. Basically, anything that would add value to the product pages would set them apart from the competitors. This in turn would make it more likely that Google would show their pages higher in the search results than they currently did because they would have something those other pages didn’t have.

Also, because it was going to be so difficult if not impossible to compete with the likes of Office Depot that have spent millions of dollars marketing their businesses, they needed to find some less competitive keyword phrases that would still bring targeted traffic.

Need to Branch Out

I recommended that they optimize all their product pages for more than just one phrase in the content and title tags. Still, I was skeptical that a site such as this — where almost all the phrases that related to the products were fairly competitive — would be able to compete with the big dogs for those terms. Therefore, it was critical for them to also branch out into long-tail keywords: those that get very little traffic on their own, but when taken in aggregate can bring significant targeted visitors to the site.

The way to target long-tail traffic is to provide interesting content to people who are thinking about purchasing the types of products they were selling. This could be done as extra resource pages on the site, and/or through a blog. I felt that, for this type of site and products, comparison pages would be ideal. There were lots of similar products that could be very confusing to a new buyer.

I also recommended that they ask their customer service people to put together some lists of the questions they often receive, and then address them on the site. And I looked at their Google Analytics for questions that got people there in the first place, and found at least 90 different ones they could use for various purposes.

Is any of this easy? Absolutely not! It takes time to make your website Google-worthy, but in the age of furry black-and-white animals such as Pandas and Penguins just waiting to take a bite out of you, this hard work is exactly what is necessary.

About the author: Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an SEO Consulting company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen.

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With all the talk about Google being a monopoly, the company is probably glad (at least partially) to see Apple make some search-related announcements during its WWDC keynote, which could help the argument in Google’s favor (even if hurting its market share).

For one, Apple’s web browser, Safari, is getting Chrome-like search functionality, while also adding Baidu as a search option. In fact, Apple is cozying up to China a great deal, as Google’s relationship with the country has grown anything but cozy.

Last year, Apple made a huge impression on society with Siri. Now, they’ve made some improvements to it. With iOS 6, Apple’s forthcoming operating system due out this fall, Siri will likely take a significant chunk of search market share for things like sports, restaurants and movies, even while Google is improving itself in both sports and local search.

And did we mention Siri is coming to the iPad?

“Ask Siri about sports scores and stats, where to eat, what movies to see — even ask to make Facebook posts,” Apple says on its website. “Siri understands more languages and works in more countries. So you can get more things done in more places around the world. And most exciting of all, with Siri on the new iPad, on more devices, too.”

On sports, Apple says, “Siri knows baseball, basketball, football, soccer, and hockey. Ask Siri for game schedules, scores from the current season’s games, or up-to-the minute scores from live games. Tell Siri to show you player stats and compare them against other players’ stats. Siri tracks team records, too, so you’ll always know how well your team is doing (or not doing). Siri is even smart enough to know whether you’re asking about the New York Giants or the San Francisco Giants, based on where you are.”

On movies, Apple says, “Siri can help you find the latest flicks by location or showtimes. Can’t decide? Ask Siri to show you a movie trailer or a Rotten Tomatoes review. Siri is also quite the film buff: Find out when a film premiered, who directed it, and what awards it won. Or ask Siri which movies your favorite actors star in, so you won’t miss any of their past or future blockbusters.”

Finally, on restaurants, Apple says, “With Siri you now have a personal restaurant concierge. Ask to find restaurants by cuisine, price, location, outdoor seating, or a combination of choices. Siri will show you a restaurant’s photos, Yelp stars, price range, and reviews. When you find a place you like, ask Siri to make a reservation through the OpenTable app.”

How many iOS users will be turning to Siri before Google for a lot of this stuff? Apple says it has sold 365 million iOS devices sold as of March.

With new Facebook integration mentioned above, Siri is only giving users more reasons to use it. The more people use it, the more they’ll likely use it for more things. Speaking of using it for more things, iOS 6 users will also be able to ask Siri to open apps. Apple is even working with car manufacturers on integrating Siri into voice control systems, with voice command buttons on steering wheels. I wonder if Google’s self-driving cars will come with voice search.

About the Author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow Chris on Twitter, on StumbleUpon, on Pinterest and/or on Google: +Chris Crum.