Google’s Panda Updates Explained in Images [infographic]
What a great little infographic to help explain the myriad of changes made through Google’s Panda Updates – and some tips on how to improve your sites performance in light of the changes.
Thanks to the team at Singlegrain for creating the infographic.
Facebook and Twitter Build a “Don’t Be Evil” Tool to Show Google’s Bias in Search Results
A couple of weeks ago, Google launched “Search Plus Your World”, a new feature that displays social information alongside regular data in Google’s search results. The goal of SPYW is to further personalise search results to deliver the most relevant data for you, which is some cases may come from your personal network.
Shortly after the announcement, Twitter and Facebook raised concerns about the new feature, claiming that Google will favour their own Google+ pages and profiles in the top results. To demonstrate this point, the two came together to build FocusOnTheUser.org, a site that allows you to modify Google search results to remove the SPYW emphasis on Google+ results.
Below is a video which demonstrates how the bookmarklet works,
In case you didn’t watch the video, the demonstration outlines a number of queries where Google displays Google+ profiles alongside regular search results. In order to determine if these Google+ profiles are the most relevant social result, the tool runs a Google query for the person’s name and returns the top social results for the query instead of the “hardcoded” Google+ result.
For example, below is an example of how the tool modifies search results for “music”,
As you can see, Google+ profiles are replaced with higher ranked results from Twitter, Myspace and Facebook.
Following the release of this tool, Google has copped criticism that they’ve abandoned their “don’t be evil” mantra and have started focusing on promoting their own products and services.
Earlier this week, search engine land interviewed Google search Chief Amit Singal, who addressed some of the concerns raised above. Here is his answer from the interview,
Q: But what about the Don’t Be Evil tool launched this week, showing that you can create People & Pages results that do go beyond Google+ content.
This is where I’m saying most people are jumping to a conclusion based on the first two weeks of the product. We’re designing a product which it will work for all individuals. It will have identities as a fundamental ingredient of search and relationships as another fundamental ingredient of search.
All this debate is centered around these very popular people out there, and what you could have done for them, and what makes the most sense. But when you’re developing a product, you don’t want to develop it for one segment of the population.
I’ve not seen the debate that I have a [personal] friend named Ben Smith, and when I try to search for him, I get bad results. If you actually build a product only for popular people, then it undermines what we are trying to do. You can’t build a product that behaves differently for one class of people then differently for the real relationships that matter for you.
I feel like this point has not been emphasized enough. People have gotten stuck on these very popular names, and no one has been focused on the cool part of the product where you can find people you care about.
At the end of the day, Google has to manage a very careful balancing act between their Google+ social network and their search results. Let’s hope they get it right.
As always, let us know what you think of the issue via the comments below.
Top 8 Tips To Generate Leads On LinkedIn
I have to admit, I have neglected my LinkedIn profile and activity in the last few months. It certainly isn’t as exciting a network as Facebook or Twitter; but I guess that’s not really the point of it.
Having recently started focusing my efforts back on LinkedIn again, I have discovered that it isn’t just a powerful professional networking tool—when used correctly, it can help generate business leads.
With almost 150 million users (business owners, managers, senior management and C-level executives), LinkedIn delivers a ready-made professional audience that is primed for the picking.
I have scoured the internet to compile 12 of the most useful tips to start generating leads from your Linkedin contacts. So here goes:
- Pimp your profile: Your profile is the core of your LinkedIn presence, and if it’s not up to par, then now is the time to change that. Provide an in-depth look at your current experience and career history in order to give other LinkedIn users a complete look at all you have to offer when it comes to a certain industry or skill-set. A professional looking photo for your profile image is a must – crop it closely so someone looking at your profile can almost look you in the eyes.
- Create a LinkedIn answer feeds: The LinkedIn Answer area provides individuals and companies a great opportunity to demonstrate their expertise by responding to questions in your field. To make it really easy to follow Answers of interest, you can create RSS feeds for specific sections of LinkedIn Answers and track new questions through your favourite RSS feeder tool.
- Connections, Connections, Connections: This ones pretty simple: The more connections you have, the wider your reach, and the more likely you are to be exposed to potential leads and business opportunities. To find more connections, concentrate on categories like current and previous employers, the college you attended or your geographic location. When you find someone with whom you want to connect, take a few minutes to write a brief but personal message. Remind this person of your connection and express your enthusiasm at the opportunity to stay in touch. Those little details can translate into a big first impression, and set the stage for future communication.
- Participate in group discussions: When you answer questions and provide insights, you gain the trust of others—and become a natural resource when it’s time to explore purchase options. There are thousands of groups across LinkedIn, you can find groups for certain industries, schools, cities, interests and other criteria. Join groups where the decision makers of your customers are likely to be found and create discussion.
- Create an effective company page: Do you have a LinkedIn Company Page for your business? If not, set one up! This allows interested parties to get a snapshot of your business as well as your employees. You’ll also be able to see which of your connections are already at a company that you can use to secure warm introductions. Set up your page, make regular status updates – you’ll be amazed at how your brand presence on the platform might grow.
- Share content: An easy way to maximize visibility is to share content on a daily basis (or even more frequently, if you can.) You probably consume a lot of content throughout the day, so why not share what you’re reading with your connections? If you want to highlight your expertise or skills, stick to sharing information that aligns subject matter and write a couple of sentences that detail your thoughts on the piece when you post.
- Search for local events: Scan upcoming events in your area that are posted on LinkedIn to find potentially valuable networking opportunities. Once you’ve established that initial face-to-face bond, you can then continue to build the relationship on LinkedIn.
- Add the SlideShare application: SlideShare will display your webinar or PowerPoint presentations in your LinkedIn profile of how your firm helps solve your prospects’ problems and challenges
How else do you use LinkedIn to generate leads? Feel free to share your own tips below.
$5 Billion Facebook IPO Expected Today
Eight years back when Mark Zuckerberg made the significant decision of launching his social networking website, little did he know that the decision was going to pay off in such a big way.
According to several leading news reports, Facebook may be filing for a long-awaited IPO as early as today (Wednesday 1st February 2012 – remember that date, it could well go down in history!).
The New York Times and CNBC report that Facebook is aiming to generate $5 billion worth revenue in its initial offering making it the largest global IPO ever offered by an internet based company. If this happens Facebook will leave behind Google’s (GOOG) $1.9 billion debut which is currently the largest U.S. Internet IPO.
The markets have responded with a sign of hope to this news since its announcement and there are high expectations that the Facebook IPO could make way for an influx of trading tech stocks at cheap values.
Market analysts predict that the social network will be worth $75 billion and $100 billion once it starts trading, however the actual figures will be available only after Facebook starts trading for a couple of months after filing for its first round of regulatory paperwork. So until then we are left to only speculate what Facebook’s future revenue and profitability could really be.
There is no doubt that the Facebook IPO is a hot property that many investors are already eying; if successful it will certainly build more confidence for investors in the dot-com and technology business. Facebook has long been a the support system for many small and independent app makers and gaming platforms like Zynga so needless to say a lot rides on Facebook filing for a successful IPO.
This news would explain why Facebook rolled out the Timeline profile template integrated with some 60 apps, at lightening speed over the last few weeks, because once Facebook is done with filing its S-1 paperwork, it will be forced to enter a “quiet period” — without product announcements, interviews or any other public statements.
Do you think Facebook is worth $100 billion?
Bing Wants to Become a “Doing” Search Engine
When Bing passed Yahoo! to become the 2nd ranked search engine in the U.S last month it seems the company also got the confidence to shed its “decision engine” label and re-launch as an ad platform with a new tagline ‘Bing is for Doing’.
The main aim for this change is the hope that it will get people to give up Googl-ing and move to Bing for ‘doing’.
Bing has been using the “Bing and Determine” motto since its debuted back in 2009 and feels its time to move forward. As told by Sean Carver, Bing’s Director for Advertising; the revamped search engine will be a platform for doing things while aiming for the 18-34age group crowds of workers.
Microsoft’s online ad revenue was up 13% in the most recent quarter, mainly because of search and I guess this is reason enough to go ahead with the changes. The new Bing ads promoting the change dares the emotional you to do something inspirational. The first ad debuted last weekend on FOX during the NFL NFC Championship Game and puts the emphasis on verbs: doing, winning, falling, healing, living, and, well, snowboarding. Here is the video:
The theme underlying these ad campaigns is ‘evolve from decisions to doing’ and with these promotional videos Microsoft will illustrate how decisions enable people to go beyond searching to doing and will highlight people doing interesting things.
Till now Bing has highlighted the decisions people make, but with this new campaign you can look forward to not only get trustworthy results, but also doing some other interesting things on Bing.
Will this ad help Bing in its battle against Google? I don’t think so, but what do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Google’s Above-the-Fold Algorithm Change Will Penalize Many Sites
Continuing its efforts to keep its search results more quality-oriented, Google recently announced a significant algorithmic change.
The change looks at the layout and amount of content on a webpage, if the ads above the fold are excessive, your site can be penalized and downgraded in the search results.
As Matt Cutts wrote on the Google Webmaster Central Blog post.
We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.
This new algorithmic update will penalize sites with little or no visible content above-the-fold or sites that have deliberately pushed relevant content underneath large blocks of ads.
While placing ads above-the-fold is quite a common practice for many websites; these ads are a good source of money for many online publishers as long as they do it within acceptable limits.
Users will not see much of a change on the front end as Google estimates that less than 1% of the searches globally will be affected by this algorithmic update. Actually, the chances of typical users noticing a reordering of results on the search page will be only 1 in 100.
For webmasters who have recently updated their page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as Google re-crawls and processes a sufficient number pages from your site to assess the changes made.
The length of time it will take for Google to reassess your pages will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.
Put simply, if you have stuffed too many ads into the area above the fold on your webpages , you are going to feel the wrath of Google’s algorithm penalty.
If you believe that your website has been a victim of the page layout algorithm change, its time you review how your web pages use the area above-the-fold and whether the content on the page is obscured or perhaps difficult to be reached by users.
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