During the last month, I have been keeping a keen eye on Google’s new approach to search. In my previous article, The Impact of Personalized Search on SEO, I mentioned that the decision to include Google+ social content in search results might not be welcomed by everyone. This especially stems from the fact that it seems as if Google places priority to Google+ information in its search results. One can argue that Google is entitled to include Google+ content, since they own the search engine. Also, Google mentioned that they would index data from Facebook and Twitter if they made their platforms open. One thing that is certainly sure however, is that Google has received significant backlash because of the decision.

Google’s social rival, the massively popular micro blogging site Twitter, are on the forefront of the accusing camp. After the new search algorithm was launched by Google, Twitter accused Google of trying to drive traffic to their social network by manipulating search results. A Twitter representative made the following statement: “For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results any time they wanted to find something on the internet. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users”.

Personally, I think Twitter has a point. Twitter has had a massive social impact over the last few years (the “Twitter Revolutions” for example) and breaking news can often be found first on Twitter. If results from Twitter (or any other site for that matter) is the most relevant, the information should be available first in Google search results. This also ties in with the aforementioned Search Engine Optimisation. If you have to compete with only slightly relevant data from Google itself, you’re in for a losing battle. One option is to embrace the change from a social marketing perspective. But is this really best for the user?

In conclusion, it seems that many are worried that relevant results get pushed down in favour of Google + content. Fundamentally, relevancy is what it all boils down to. Google might not be in the wrong here, they are certainly entitled to promote their social network, but they should not compromise the quality of their search results in the process.

Twitter/Facebook - image credit - www.cbsnews.com

Can you believe it’s already the end of January 2012. In this article I will quickly recap on some highlights of 2011 and what we can expect in 2012 when it comes to technology world-wide and in South Africa.

2011

One of the most exciting launches in 2011 was the launch of the iPhone 4S, officially launched in South Africa December 16th 2011. The new member of the iPhone family has a dual core processor, improved camera (8 megapixels) and improved video capturing capabilities. With this Apple set a new standard for the development of Super Phones.

After months of speculation Google launched their new attempt at Social Media. Google Plus (Google+) was launched in mid 2011. The platform seems to be a combination of features from existing social media platforms and is visually very plain and simple to understand. It remains to be seen if Google+ will play a big role in Social Media or will it come to an end like its predecessor Google Wave.

YouTube got a little renovation. In 2011 YouTube improved the user experience of their website. They changed the layout to make navigation and finding channels easier and also made it visually more appealing.
Google bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5B, a dedicated Android partner, which will enable Google to supercharge the android ecosystem.

2012

Mobile! I think a lot of tech companies will be focusing on building better and more functional mobile applications as the market for smart and super phones is exploding. Mobile penetration in Africa especially is higher than some European countries. I think we’ll see a lot of innovation in the mobile application sector especially in terms of location based services, social networking, mobile commerce and mobile banking. I think we’ll also see advances when it comes to mobile hardware especially battery life.

Social media should have a large impact on search engines delivering more personalized search results than ever before. I also think Google and other large search engines will take social media more in account when it comes to delivering organic search results using user generated information to establish whether a website is a good resource or not. See Marcel’s article: The Impact of Personalized Search on SEO

Android will probably increase their market share in mobile device operating systems with the purchase of Motorola Mobility.

Whatever is in store for us for the year 2012 – it will be an exciting year for technology. I am sure we’ll see great innovation in technology in general and especially in mobile devices.

On the 10th of January Google included content from Google Plus, the newly launched Social Network, into their search result algorithm. Calling it “Search, plus your world”, it marks the true beginning of social search. You can still perform a global search, which omits all social results, which therefore presents you with two options: global and personalized (It does not appear that this feature has been fully rolled out in the South African version of Google at the time of writing, although I did come across it last night on Google South Africa). Some of the features of Personalized Search include an indicator of the total number of personal results in your search as well as the results themselves accompanied by a blue icon on the left. Additionally, Google included Google Plus Profiles in Search and People and Pages.

Having all the Personalised content from Google Plus mentioned above weaved into search result pages might not be welcomed by everyone. And at first glance it might seem to completely change the way we approach SEO. A lot of us in the field of Search Engine Optimization have been preparing for the day that search gets social. The option to switch between Global and Personalized results however, came as a surprise. Users can choose whether or not they want to use personalised search. This essentially means that current SEO practices still play the same role as always.

One cannot, however, predict the changes Google will make in the future, and tapping into the SEO potential of Personalised Search will play an increasingly important role in a Search Marketing campaign. Google might require us to be logged in at all times to use any of its features, including search. Even if this happens, I believe traditional SEO will remain alive and well. In its core, SEO is about optimization for the user, to optimize websites in order to facilitate and improve the search experience. This will always remain relevant.

Google is in the process of simplifying user experience by scrapping products that haven’t met their  goals, or merging them as features into other  products. Though I myself hadn’t heard of some of these features, I was interested to research what tools they had experimented with in order to achieve the Google we all love. Google’s continued pursuit of innovation and user experience perfection is inspiring to say the least.  Below are some of their test products that didn’t quite make their ‘Google cut’.

• Google Friend Connect – gave web masters the ability to add social features to their sites by embedding a few lines of code. The feature will be retired as of 1^st March 2012 for non-blogger sites. Affected sites have been encouraged to create a Google+ page, and add a Google+ badge to their site so they can keep in touch with their community of followers via their page.

• Google Gears – browser extension allowed creation of offline web applications. As part of efforts to help incorporate offline capabilities into HTML5, as of 1^st December 2011, Gears based Gmail and Calendar offline will no longer work and later in December Gears will no longer be available for download. Gmail, Calendar and Docs can instead be accessed offline in Chrome.

• Google Wave – a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. Development on Google Wave was stopped over a year ago, but as of 31^st January 2012 Wave will become read-only and no new “Waves” will be created. On 30^th April 2012 Wave will be turned off completely. Individual Waves can still be exported until the feature is turned off, but there are still open-source projects such as Apache Wave and Walkaround which offer equal functionality.

• Knol – aimed to improve web content by allowing experts to collaborate on in-depth articles (similar to Wikipedia). Annotum, “an open-source scholarly authoring and publishing platform based on WordPress” [1], has been created in order to continue the work of Knol – which will no longer be available as of 1^st October 2012.

These are just a few of the products Google will be scrapping, their aim: “to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience”[1], which, in turn, will benefit not only users but advertisers as well.

To find out how we can help your site to rank better on Google, take a look at our Search Engine Optimization page

References:

1. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-spring-cleaning-out-of-season.html

After an almost 3months field trial, Google+ Social Network is now open for anyone to join with or without invite.

This was announced Tuesday 20^th September 2011 by Vic Gundotra, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering on the company’s blog. “For the past 12 weeks we’ve been in field trial, and during that time we’ve listened and learned a great deal. We’re nowhere near done, but with the improvements we’ve made so far we’re ready to move from field trial to beta, and introduce our 100th feature: open signups. This way anyone can visit google.com/+, join the project and connect with the people they care about.”

The new features are said to be rolled out over the course of today globally. [1]

Some of these features include improvements to +Hangouts which uses video to allow people to connect “face-to-face-to-face”.

Hangouts on your phone – the mobile app was rolled out on the Android Market Tuesday allowing Hanging out anytime from almost anywhere.

Hangouts On Air – allows Google+ users to speak to large audiences or view public broadcasts.

Hangouts with extras – offers additional features enhancing time spent hanging out such as : Screensharing – so you can show off pics, high scores or anything else that may be on your screen. Sketchpad – to allow drawing, doodles or scribbling together. Google Docs – enables writing, planning or presentations as a group. Named Hangouts – for creation of a public hang out based on any topic, be it Medicine, Politics, Fashion, or Music. Thought the extras are still under construction these features are being previewed and Google is looking for feedback.

Hangouts APIs – allows developers to build apps and games.

Search in Google+ – Enables users to perform searches of any topic returning relevant posts and popular web content. “Google+ search results include items that only you can see, so family updates are just as easy to find as international news”.  [1]

Google+ brings interesting innovations to Social Media as we have come to know it, and is sure to give long standing Social Media front runner Facebook a run for its money. Though the product is still new it has built a lot of excitement and looks promising to keep and build on this momentum.

References:

1. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/google-92-93-94-95-96-97-98-99-100.html