Revolution – Search Engine Algorithms and Tools 2009

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UFF! We now there – I mean on the other side.

SEO and Online Marketing is never going to be same again.

- New AdWords with better layout and compleatly new tools

- Real Time Search in Search Engines

- Social Media based CRM systems

- Google Wave

- Google Chrome and soon OS

- Another face of Microsoft – Bing

- Yahoo! step away from Search Engine

- Another generation of iPhone/iPod related products

- More…

- and More, and More

So if you were Search Engines Commentator this year you had hands full of work but how this whole thing is going to change live of civile user or business online marketing?

Perhaps we will see new generation of social media service aggregators which will help manage customers and your presence online. Micro-targeting will have a new meaning as you will be able on world scale and micro-target users of multiple networks. Currently managing social media is a pain in back side as smaller businesses are simply unable to cope with keeping their accounts updated – Effect – dead accounts all over the place.

And SEO (I doubt something like that still exists in the form of keyword optimisation but if yeas there is a challange:

- Google AdWords on the top of Natural search taking more and more space especially with Maps in AdWords and Portal Links in Adwords too

- Google Maps on the top of of almost all local searches – Universal Search properly taking over

- Real time Search on the first page of Google pushing SEO even further

- Search Options button to split General, Forum, Blog etc search

- and more and more coming with back to basics (keyword tags and description tag)

I believe we can manage very well as these are great opportunities but it needs a lot of effort especially from Online Marketers point of view to convince their clients mostly medium to small business that being on twitter is the way to go

We can do it, can we?

Google Algorithm and Impact on WWW size

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Since Google’s policy (and Google Algorithm) has drastically changed last year regarding paid links WWW had another great reason to grow in volume (Of course Google’s decision is just another reason for having another social media account). Everyone seems to have twitter accounts, links on blogs and works hard on all kinds of forums to get the link in either form out there.
I tried to get a sensible clue out of this and finally I thought about Google Algorithm.
Google Algorithm is not longer brilliant because of its relevancy. Google Algorithm is great because this is a very powerful business engine behind one of the biggest companies in the world. Google’s Algorithm task is to deliver results not to us but to Google’s boardroom and not in the form of horribly looking text links which they recently try to make it more attractive but in the form of
money,
more money
and more money.

My lovely cheeky Google Giant makes money out of AdWords platform which is working well only because of Google brilliant algorithm.
AdWords need more users and publishers to make money so the key success will be to adjust Algorithm always the way that it will produce more users and publishers and will help to get rid of competition buy simply telling everyone – You know AdWords is the only way to go if you want online presence (very clever).

- Among other stuff Google owns: Blogger, Orkut etc – These services are unlikely to bring money back unless they have AdSense publishers and/or traffic
- New Content = New Pages – paid linking doesn’t usually bring new www. Link publisher gets all the money with no contribution to Google he is very unlikely to introduce AdSense online.
- This is simple the more pages is out there the bigger job search engines have and the bigger money are going to their pockets (they all know that not only Google)

I like everything what makes web growing – so lets make it even bigger – I just did my bit – did you?

Wave Hello to Wave – First Impressions on New Googleworld Product

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So Wave is in trial for 5 days now and – I have no invitation. Shame, Never mind.

So 500,000 users are in the trial and majority of them in the US. Google says it’s an amazing tool, we say Google’s PR this year is better then ever.

It is so strong that it makes us believe that there are just three busy areas for journalists, columnists and bloggers this year;

1) Michael Jackson

2) Economy Downturn

3) Google

(There is also Middle East war and political affairs but this is going for sometime now).

Basically if you are “Horse and Country” journalist or correspondent for Far East or Latin America you either cover one of these subjects above or get made redundant as there was nothing to do.

So where were we? I know, another brilliant invention from Google – Wave. Is it good? We will see, it seems great but I believe there is still one important problem with Google inventions – lack of functionality on the launch day. A tool like Wave has to be business orientated. Market will test this idea but from over 1h long promo video it looks like they have still a lot of to do.

Good Luck to Google Giant!

Google 11th Birthday Marks Online Advertising in UK at its Peak

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Coincidence or very clever PR? Just 3 days after Google’s 11th birthday BBC published IAB and PWC study regarding Online Advertising. Official numbers say:

Online spending grew 4.6% to £1.752bn in the first half of 2009, while TV spending shrank 16.1% to £1.639bn.

Of Course this is not a milestone (it was expected sooner or later). The study sparkled a lot of discussion what is better TV or online. In my opinion Eggheads from both sides forgot couple of things.

Both types of advertising are fuelling each other. The truth is if not tv advertising online would be a little dwarf brother of a paper based advertising. Is enough to see how gigantic traffic is referred to your website when you have links on websites like BBC or Times online.

Of course this traffic is generated because these guys themselves in their real world publications promote online world. On the other hand we have TV people banging their heads against the wall saying that TV advertising is the best value per customer – of course they keep forgetting that you need initial £1m to start talking about putting your ad out there not even mentioning timescale for the project.

I am Glad to be in Online Marketing business. Maybe it sounds narcissistic, but online advertising is the most effective form of marketing your products if you need to be fast out there look no further. On the other hand I am a very concious how powerful Radio, TV and Paper ads can be. This is the reason we always work with PR people and our strategy contains very powerful message.

But for AdWords, Webmaster tools, GMail, AdSense, Analytics, Conversion Tracking and Google Labs inventions we should all sing:

Happy Birthday Google!

Smartphones, Google, the G2 phone and a purpose?

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Good Afternoon readers,

Topic of discussion for today: smartphones – especially the G2 Touch from HTC and T-Mobile supporting the Android operating system.

Everyone seems to have an iphone. It’s the phone to have because it’s fast, has a touchscreen and “has an application for everything”. Though this all comes at a hefty price, and I’m not personally an Apple fan, it does do what it says on the box. In comparison to stories about the original set of Ipods, the iPhone does appear to be fairly robust and doesn’t keep you waiting when you are running multiple applications.

I decided that I was a step above this market and decided to buy the Google Phone. In fact not just the Google Phone, but the brand new sparkling G2.

I was set to fall in love with this phone. It had so much potential and the G1 had had some really good reviews from the people that had had it for the previous year or so. The new G2 is lighter and slimmer as it lost its slide out keyboard, it boasted the Android operating system. It has many applications available which are all generally free. It has a lot of features to be amazed by.

Sadly, they don’t work.

I’ve been told by Google fanatics that this is because google were “rushing it off the line” and so there are still some bugs to fix.

Let’s start with the Bluetooth technology.
To say it’s not finished in this particular circumstance is a huge understatement. It just doesn’t work. In fact, it breaks things. I connected it to my car stereo and tried to play some music through it. Within a minute my entire radio console had frozen and could not be reset without turning off the engine, and my phone would not turn its bluetooth off.

It is however quite happy to connect on the basis it is doing phone calls only. This is brilliant for me. But (and this is a big but) you are very likely to confuse it when the connection between the phone and the radio/headset is dropped. It might not work this out and if you try to call somebody you will not hear anything that’s going on. Even if the bluetooth is turned off it can still miraculously believe that it is connected to a headset.

A reset of the phone is then required to fix this issue. A bit too late when someone is getting annoyed trying to call you.

Media
The mp3 player is very slow to open and can crash causing unknown errors in the operating system. The same can be said for the internet browser.

Simplicity – an alarm clock
Now I’m going to give you a scenario. You’ve decided because of the phone’s very well inbuilt features of setting times for an alarm clock that you’re going to leave it to get you up in the morning. And let’s say you want to get up at 8am. Well the phone has a tick button that enables it to be clever enough to work out from your GPS location what your timezone is and reset the time accordingly. Imagine my surprise when I wake up 4 hours late because my GPS location (reading South of London) has decided I’m in Peru and my alarm didn’t go off. Very helpful.

I believe I couldn’t fly…
I’m now going to go back to the speed and processing power of this nifty device. Opening your text messages can also cause the operating system to crash. If you do manage to open up the message panel, it seems to assign the wrong contact name to each selection of messages. Give it a minute! It’ll correct itself (or change to another incorrect name – one of them).

I don’t like Apple Products. Ipod? Got a Creative Zen thanks. Mac? I can build a real computer and design it around myself. Yet when it comes down to smartphones, HTC (creators of the G-series phones) just do not seem to be able to get it right (the MDAs were shocking) and so I would actually recommend an iPhone when someone asked. Or maybe a Nokia…

New Bigger Google, literally…

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Google makes a small enhancement, with big results!

Google Supersizes it's Search box and buttons...

Google Supersizes it's Search bar and buttons...

It’s a change that some people think Google should have made a long time ago, while others won’t really care about or even notice the change. After all, it’s only a simple change. But when you consider how rarely Google tinker with their layout, any change to Google’s search bar, no matter how minor and insignificant, can be thought of as a major change.

The announcement was made by none other than Google’s Marissa Meyer. And she ended it by saying:

“Google has always been first and foremost about search, and we’re committed to building and powering the best search on the web — now available through a supersized search box.’

“Computational Knowledge Engine”

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Wow. Added with the name of WolframAlpha you’re sure to understand what you’ve just unveiled.

However with a brief explanation there’s no reason to be running away with your tail between your legs. Simply, the creators of this website believe that it knows everything. They reckon that it can answer any question.  Any question that is given in the exact format that they need AND only requires limited knowledge of the subject you’re talking about – oh, and it generally has to be Mathematics based.

Or does it? I’m sat here playing around with this new toy and though I’m not getting any of the results I would like or expect, it is redirecting me through odd routes to find information I might like. I can’t find out how many legs an octopus has but I can find out when Henry VIII was born (even if typing Henry VIII born doesn’t return the result I can find it eventually).

It seems like a great idea but its scale hasn’t been fully explained. Do these developers believe they are looking to create a mass of knowledge – both known and computable – that will become such a powerful intellect above any other computer around? Or are they just making a scientific calculator that has bit more knowledge and social life than the one you’d carry in your pencil case?

The most dissapointing aspect of this website for myself as a Mathematician is the result it returns if you ask for the root of -1. This is known as ‘i’ (a complex number). All Wolfram has to offer is repeating the information you just entered (root[-1]).

However I am willing to give this construction the benefit of the doubt for future development as it has an answer to “What is the meaning of life?”:

Input interpreation:

answer to life, the universe, and everything

Result:

42
(according to Douglas Adams' humorous science fiction novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

The developers also wish to track who is copying and finding out any information through their website. When you get your results, any text on the page that you need will be presented as an image. To be able to copy it you will have to click on it and copy from a ‘plain text’ popup box. The owners of WolframAlpha are watching what you’re searching and copying. The question that this begs: Could they be recording data to turn it into a paid for service? We’ll find out as it spreads out across the internet.

Google introduce new forecast feature – added this week to Insights for Search

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Google has developed a formula to predict hot online search topics. The formula attempts to characterize the predictability of a Trends series based on its historical performance.

Google Trends, a free online service that shows what search subjects are gaining or sinking in popularity, has been around for some time. But now engineers at Google’s lab in Israel have come up with a forecasting model while studying whether past and current search patterns hold reliable clues to what people will search for in future months.

These findings resulted in a new forecasting feature added this week to Google’s Insights for Search.

More than half of the most popular search queries at Google are predictable as far as 1 year ahead, with a margin of error of about 12%, according to the Israel lab engineers. With categories such as health, travel & food and drink being particularly predictable, this tool could prove extremely useful in these markets, and could help advertisers decide how to disperse their budgets most effectively in future online campaigns!

Yahoo! and Microsoft finally at the altar – Is Yahoosoft coming in 9 months?

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The two giants in calm and peace create strong opposition to Google.

After several years of boardroom pushing, fallen share prices, angry shareholders, wasted money and ineffective search algorithms we have now something which will be trying to counterweight huge Google supremacy.

As nothing stays forever Google also must go at some point now we will wait to see whether it is possible for Yahoosoft to challenge Google. After recent announcements regarding Google OS release Yahoo and MSN realised that there is a great chance they will be out of the market soon if they do not combine their technologies, traffic share to overcome current problems. Bing launch which end up as another Microsoft’s failure on search market (because of low level of customers) as well as news which were around regarding YouTube advance on the second position as World’s most busy search engine created good atmosphere for this gigantic move. All these events left no doubt for Yahoo! and Microsoft what needs to be done next. For now in couple of months we can expect Bing results on Yahoo! network with Microsoft’s ads served in various places. Yahoo! secures its position revenue and is able to cut on engineers and other costs it means they sold their traffic. Microsoft will take all search engine work and advertising platform development under their wings in return for just 12% ads revenue income. For now this is 10 years contract but…

What challenges wait if there is no divorce in the future

I would say that success of this merger depends on Yahoosoft reinvention in next couple of years mostly regarding Bing search platform but not only from end user point of view but also from Advertisers point of view.
Google success is based on its AdWords platform whoever will be able to challenge its effectives will succeed. It is natural progression for Google to go from PPC to PPA (but still PPC based). But is there any reason for Bing to continue this pathway

Who said the next advertising model must be based on PPC?

Creating innovative platform for ad publishers, ad creators, online marketing agencies and finally end consumers is the major challenge for Yahoosoft.
They also have to remember there is no chance to beat Google if you do not invest in other then English based platforms.