WebProNews

Tag: Search

  • Old Report About Old Google Test Ruffles Feathers

    An algorithm change Google probably only used in a limited test roughly eight years ago is apparently the top story in tech this morning. It will likely give Google’s competitors more talking points, but probably won’t make a lot of difference in any other way.

    The Wall Street Journal got its hands on a “previously undisclosed report by staffers at the FTC that reveals new details about how Google Inc. manipulated search results to favor its own services over rivals’ , even when they weren’t most relevant for users.” Here’s the paper’s take on that particular element of the report.

    If you want better context, you’ll find that in Danny Sullivan’s article, which includes his longtime experience covering the search industry, as well as some background information from Google itself.

    The headlines surrounding the story would make you think a bombshell has been dropped, but once you start digging, it becomes far less dramatic. Here’s the dramatic part:

    One way Google favored its own results was to change its ranking criteria. Google typically ranks sites based on measures like the number of links that point to a site, or how often users click on the site in search results.

    But Marissa Mayer, who was then a Google vice president, said Google didn’t use click-through rates to determine the ranking for its own specialized-search sites, because they would rank too low, according to the staff report. Ms. Mayer is now chief executive of Yahoo Inc. A Yahoo spokeswoman didn’t immediately make her available for comment.

    Instead, Google would “automatically boost” its own sites for certain specialized searches that otherwise would favor rivals, the FTC found. If a comparison-shopping site was supposed to rank highly, Google Product Search was placed above it. When Yelp was deemed relevant to a user’s search query, Google Local would pop up on top of the results page, the staff wrote.

    As Sullivan notes, this is the most “alarming” part of what the Journal has uncovered, though I can’t say I’m particularly alarmed.

    As mentioned in the intro, we’re talking about an old report about an algorithm change Google probably only used in a limited test roughly eight years ago. The report itself is from 2012, before the FTC reached a settlement with Google without pursuing legal action.

    As explained in Sullivan’s article, the change Google implemented happened in 2007, and was likely only part of a limited test. We’re talking the days of Froogle. You’d be forgiven if you don’t know that that means because Google hasn’t used that name since 2007. Also, Google maintains it was mainly about not sending users to other search results pages (as in those on other sites), because people don’t want to search for something only to be taken to another page of search results once they’ve already landed on one page of search results. Sullivan writes:

    It seems that in 2006 through 2007, Google decided for some reason that it wanted to demote comparison shopping sites as part of a “diversity” effort. My guess is that it thought listing actual merchants and product pages would be better. However, Google was also making moves at that time to give its then “Froogle” shopping search engine more visibility. It was something that Google raters, people that Google hires to evaluate the quality of its search results, didn’t like.

    …

    Again, it’s unclear if Google did this with live search results that everyone saw or a test service that only raters used. There are suggestions in the footnote that it was a limited test. Regardless, it remains alarming that it specifically went after competitors to create an algorithm designed to demote them, regardless of whether that was in the name of “diversity” or not.

    As he notes, Google has indicated repeatedly in the past that it doesn’t blacklist competitors for competitive reasons. Maybe they haven’t told the whole truth (keeping mind that this was still likely only implemented in a limited test). Maybe Google does need to be called on that. Either way, none of this can really be looked at as something that’s directly related to Google’s current practices post FTC antitrust investigation (not to mention the one in Europe) unless they’re found to be doing it now.

    Yelp (which is specifically mentioned in the report) has been one of the biggest critics of Google when it comes to stuff like this, yet the service is all over Google results. Here’s a quote from CEO Jeremy Stoppelman from last summer:

    “I think obviously, we’ve been competing with Google over many, many years now quite successfully. And we think that by focusing on great content and building, fostering, growing communities continues to be the right strategy. And in fact, where we have the largest communities in the U.S., we’ve seen actually an uptick as a result of the recent Google algorithmic change. They’re constantly making changes and alterations, some of which has been in the media. And most of that really, on a day-to-day basis, doesn’t have a material effect. And so I think fundamentally, we feel that everything is still in good shape. Consumers are flocking to our content. You can see that in our overall traffic growth, and so we’re just going to continue to focus on community building and content quality.”

    Of course there’s always that whole “Competition is a click away” thing too.

    I guess what I’m mainly driving at here is that while the report is mildly interesting, readers should try to keep things in perspective. I’m sure FairSearch and Google’s other competitors will have a field day, but at the end of the day, I really don’t see this as incredibly earth shattering. Cue comments accusing me of working for Google.

    Update: I thought it might also be useful to revisit some quotes from the FTC from when it announced its settlement with Google:

    “The evidence the FTC uncovered through this intensive investigation prompted us to require significant changes in Google’s business practices. However, regarding the specific allegations that the company biased its search results to hurt competition, the evidence collected to date did not justify legal action by the Commission,” said Beth Wilkinson, outside counsel to the Commission. “Undoubtedly, Google took aggressive actions to gain advantage over rival search providers. However, the FTC’s mission is to protect competition, and not individual competitors. The evidence did not demonstrate that Google’s actions in this area stifled competition in violation of U.S. law.”

    The FTC said in a press release:

    “The FTC conducted an extensive investigation into allegations that Google had manipulated its search algorithms to harm vertical websites and unfairly promote its own competing vertical properties, a practice commonly known as “search bias.” In particular, the FTC evaluated Google’s introduction of “Universal Search” – a product that prominently displays targeted Google properties in response to specific categories of searches, such as shopping and local – to determine whether Google used that product to reduce or eliminate a nascent competitive threat. Similarly, the investigation focused on the allegation that Google altered its search algorithms to demote certain vertical websites in an effort to reduce or eliminate a nascent competitive threat. According to the Commission statement, however, the FTC concluded that the introduction of Universal Search, as well as additional changes made to Google’s search algorithms – even those that may have had the effect of harming individual competitors – could be plausibly justified as innovations that improved Google’s product and the experience of its users. It therefore has chosen to close the investigation.”

    Image via Google

  • Twitter: We’re Not Blocking Porn on Purpose

    Twitter: We’re Not Blocking Porn on Purpose

    Twitter, one of the last refuges for uncensored, explicit content in the realm of social media, appears to be blocking certain sexually explicit search results for certain keywords.

    Searches for words like “porn,” “boobs,” “pussy,” f*cking,” and more currently yield no “Top” results.

    If you select “All” results, however, you’ll see plenty.

    There is also a peculiar lack of photo and video results for these sexually-themed searches:

    Hm. That doesn’t seem possible.

    Not likely.

    Of course, this immediately raised concern on the site. Not only would this be very bad news for the adult industry, who promotes its content heavily on Twitter, but there’s also this angle:

    But it looks like you shouldn’t worry just yet. Twitter is saying this is all a mistake.

    “We recently made some changes to improve the algorithm that fetches the most relevant content for Top Tweets in search results.” a Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed. “A bug was discovered that caused us to aggressively filter some content from Top Tweets inadvertently. We’re working to correct the issue.”

    So, if that’s true, we should expect to see boobs all over the “Top” results soon. As of the writing of this article, however, there is still a shocking lack of “top” and multimedia results for many adult-themed searches.

  • Is Google Looking Desperate in Firefox?

    Is Google Looking Desperate in Firefox?

    Google is getting louder about wanting Firefox users to switch their default browser back to its search engine.

    As you may know, Mozilla replaced Google with Yahoo as the default search provider in Firefox in the United States back in November. This led to Yahoo gaining some market share in the months after.

    Unfortunately for Yahoo, that growth seems to have stalled. Based on data from StatCounter, Google hit its lowest share in the U.S. in January, while Yahoo reached its highest in over five years. That Yahoo growth flatlined in February, however, though the search engine was mostly able to hang on to the additions it already made.

    search market in the u.s.

    Since Yahoo and Mozilla made the deal, Yahoo has been displaying a message at the top of its homepage and other properties, encouraging users to “upgrade to the new Firefox”.

    Google has also been displaying messages trying to get users to switch their default search experience back to Google Search for a while. In January, it put out this little video guide:

    Google also started telling Firefox users who visited its homepage to set the default experience back to Google with a message saying, “Get to Google faster. Make Google your default search engine.”

    Now, Google is taking things up a notch. It’s actually showing big ad-like messages at the top of unrelated search results pages, telling users to switch search engines:

    If you click “learn how,” you’re presented with this:

    If you click “no thanks,” it just disappears. If you ignore Google’s prompt, it goes away after two or three searches.

    Search Engine Land describes this strategy as “begging” and “desperate” on Google’s part.

    Outgoing Google CFO Patrick Pichette was asked about Yahoo’s partnership with Mozilla on Google’s recent earnings call. He said:

    You’ve all heard the announcements about Mozilla. And so when we don’t comment on the details of any of our partnerships that we have, having said that, we continue to do two things that really matter. One is our users continue to actually go in, if they love Google, they will continue to find Google, whichever platform, whichever browser, and that’s really what we’ve focused on doing.

    And then the second piece is the way to win this in the long-term, right? It’s very simple. You just make wonderful products. And when you make wonderful products that are magical people will find them….partnerships matter. But at the core of it, you need partnership, because you have a phenomenal product. And that’s what we’re going to continue to build this amazing company.

    It’s interesting to see how far Google is going to get Firefox users to switch back. Soon, it could be implementing a similar strategy in Apple’s Safari browser. Google’s deal with Apple to remain the default search experience there is set to expire soon. We don’t know exactly when, but we know it’s soon.

    It’s possible that Apple could go with Google again, but speculation that it will go with another search engine like Yahoo or Bing (at least in the U.S.) has been picking up. Yahoo and Microsoft have both been said to be ready to battle for the spot. On Yahoo’s earnings call, CEO Marissa Mayer was pretty clear about really wanting to have Yahoo as the default on Safari. She said:

    The Safari platform is basically one of the premiere search engine in the world, if not the premiere search engine in the world. We are definitely in the search distribution business. I think we stated that really clearly in the past and I think with Mozilla and also in addition we brought Amazon and eBay onboard with smaller distribution partnerships in Q4, we are in search distribution business and anyone who is in that business needs to be interested in the Safari deal.

    The Safari users are among the most engaged and lucrative users in the world and it’s something that we would really like to be able to provide. We work really closely with Mozilla to ultimately bring to their users an experience that they designed and that they feel really suit those users and we welcome the opportunity with any other partner to do the same, particularly one with Apple’s volume and end user base.

    As Kara Swisher, who was liveblogging the event, said, “Mayer appeared to practically salivate at the prospect if Apple throws over Google for someone else. Issue: Microsoft. Another issue: Yahoo search technology would have to be majorly upgraded.”

    Earlier this week, Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling predicted that Apple will not renew its Google deal (again, at least in the U.S.), saying both parties have reasons not to renew. He wrote:

    In 2011, Macquarie Capital estimated that Google earned $1.3 billion in search-related revenue from its default position on Safari. Of that, Google was supposed to have paid Apple over a billion dollars. In 2013, Morgan Stanley also estimated that Google paid Apple over $1 billion annually for the privilege of being the Safari default.

    If these figures were correct at the time, they’re likely out-of-date today. If anything, there’s more mobile search volume and more revenue than in 2011 or 2013. Google’s net profit from Safari is substantially less than the $1 billion it probably pays Apple. Google is therefore probably willing to bet that its net will go up if it walks away from the deal.

    He also noted that Google probably assumes it will get users to switch back and/or get them using its search app. It most likely would get many users back, and it would also most likely implement an aggressive switchback campaign as it’s doing in Mozilla. Still, it’s going to be an interesting narrative to watch.

  • Should Google Show Press Releases As News?

    Should Google Show Press Releases As News?

    As you’ve probably noticed in the past, Google sometimes includes an “In the News” section in its search results. This points users to a few sources that have newsy information about whatever it is that they searched for.

    The feature used to point users to stories indexed in Google News. It still does that, but last fall, Google started showing content from additional sources, including reddit, to go along with the Google News content.

    Now, Google showing content directly from the companies that are in the news has become a story.

    Should Google show company content under the guise of news? Do you think this will mislead users? Let us know in the comments.

    Reuters reported on Wednesday that the feature has been letting company statements in at the top of the news links. The narrative of the report is that biased statements and press releases can appear above unbiased news stories, and mislead users about critical information. A side narrative of the report is that this can also hurt news publisher traffic. It shares this from Google:

    “The goal of search is to get users the right answer at any one time as quickly as possible — that may mean returning an article from an established publisher or from a smaller niche publisher or indeed it might be a press release,” the Google spokeswoman said.

    She added Google, which did not announce the September change, does not get paid for including press releases on the lists.

    Examples of companies who have recently topped the “In the News” section include Gemalto and Apple. The former has been doing damage control after a hacking incident, while the latter is selling smart watches. It’s worth noting that some find one of the more significant angles of the Apple Watch to be that some models cost as much as $17,000, and this is not something that Apple drew attention to in its own announcements.

    According to Reuters, the Gemalto statement that appeared in the section downplayed the impact of the hacking. This is the main thing that’s not sitting well with critics. Should a company be able to have that kind of control over the narrative of news stories about themselves?

    If you ask me, it’s a fair question, but it’s also probably being a bit blown out of proportion. Maybe I’m giving people too much credit, but I think most users can figure out that if a story is coming directly from a company, it’s probably going to have that bias. And it’s not like Google shows only one story in these news boxes. Maybe the company message shouldn’t always rank above other unbiased reports, but there’s likely enough other content on the page to discern that it’s not the only take on the news. There’s also something to be said for allowing a company (especially when under attack in the media) to have its side of the story heard.

    When it comes to announcements, it’s likely that the company’s version of the story is actually the best result in some cases. Like Nate Swanner at Slash Gear notes, “The issue here is context.”

    This shouldn’t be a problem if Google can get the context right. Whether or not it can is another argument.

    There are some other points to consider here that don’t seem to be getting much mention by those who have weighed into the conversation. For one, Google News itself has included press releases for a long time. I’m not sure if this has always been the case, but it’s been like that for years. It’s not at all uncommon to see results from Business Wire, PR Newswire, and others. That’s fine, and truth be told, sometimes I prefer these results.

    The main difference is apparently that now Google may show releases directly from the corporate websites (like Apple.com, for example) in the “In the News” section. It’s really not a huge leap from what has long been possible. A release from one of the aforementioned distribution services could have appeared there anyway. I just don’t see this as a major concern.

    Google does say in a Google News help article, “For sites containing press releases, please keep in mind that we’re unable to include sites that primarily promote their own product or organization.”

    Again, that’s Google News, and the “In the News” section includes additional content, so this doesn’t appear to apply to that. Also, press release distribution services clearly fall into a different category as they promote everybody’s content, not just a single company’s.

    Google’s web search algorithm has hurt press release sites in the past. That’s not really here nor there, but it is an interesting aside. It was actually less than a year ago that we were talking about press releases sites taking a hit after Panda 4.0. News results are a different beast though.

    Another element that should be a part of this conversation is that Google and Twitter recently struck a deal, which will likely see Google including more real-time tweet activity in search results. It remains to be see how Google is going to implement that this time around, but it’s going to give Google better access to fresh content, which could downplay the significance of the “In the News” box. It’s also possible that it could contribute directly to what actually appears in that box. We don’t know.

    See: Google’s Twitter Deal May Impact Your Reputation

    As far as the “In the News” section, AdWeek’s PRNewser says, “The change is good news for PR and bad news for major journalistic institutions like the Times and The Wall Street Journal, because whoever posts the announcement first will get top placement and clicks. It’s a symptom of our digital age, though: new distribution channels allow brands — and, by extension, their PR teams — to become publishers with greater power to drive the narrative.”

    Some think businesses will be able to game their way into the “In the News” results.

    What do you think about the whole thing. Is there cause for concern here? Share your thoughts.

    Image via Google

  • Drink Up – Google Wants to Make You a Bartender

    No, Google won’t serve you drinks – but it’ll tell you how to make them.

    Google has added cocktails to the list of instructables it’ll show with the Knowledge Graph – so if you’re wondering how to make a tequila sunrise, Google has your back. Alternatively, you could just put the tequila in a glass and drink it. That’s the preferred method of tequila consumption.

    Searching for the phrase “how do I make an old fashioned” or even just “how to make old fashioned” yields a new card that explains the basics of the drink-making process.

    The recipes aren’t really recipes, as with the ones for food – they’re more generic instructions (mix some bourbon) – but it’s a pretty nice basic outline of how to make the drink.

    Image via Thinkstock

  • Should Facts Outrank Links As A Google Signal?

    Should Facts Outrank Links As A Google Signal?

    Google has a new paper out that discusses how it might rank pages based on facts as opposed to links. If this were to become the case, it would represent a huge move for the search engine, which has historically used links as a major indication of relevance. In fact, it was the PageRank algorithm that really put Google on the map in the first place, and led to the search engine overtaking other players like Yahoo years ago.

    Do you think Google’s algorithm would be better off with the approach discussed in the paper? Let us know in the comments.

    These days, Google has at least over 200 signals it uses to rank content, but links are still a significant part of that. Just how significant they is debatable, particularly as Google includes more and more content and answers directly in its search results.

    Of course just having this paper doesn’t mean that Google has implemented such a ranking strategy, nor does it necessarily mean that it will. The company has countless patents, and not all of them are in use. That said, the fact that Google has been researching this, and has indeed authored a paper on it, combined with the moves the search engine has already made, suggest that this is something Google could implement at some point.

    You can read the whole paper here. The abstract reads as follows:

    The quality of web sources has been traditionally evaluated using exogenous signals such as the hyperlink structure of the graph. We propose a new approach that relies on endogenous signals, namely, the correctness of factual information provided by the source. A source that has few false facts is considered to be trustworthy.

    The facts are automatically extracted from each source by information extraction methods commonly used to construct knowledge bases. We propose a way to distinguish errors made in the extraction process from factual errors in the web source per se, by using joint inference in a novel multi-layer probabilistic model.

    We call the trustworthiness score we computed Knowledge-Based Trust (KBT). On synthetic data, we show that our method can reliably compute the true trustworthiness levels of the sources. We then apply it to a database of 2.8B facts extracted from the web, and thereby estimate the trustworthiness of 119M webpages. Manual evaluation of a subset of the results confirms the effectiveness of the method.

    So, they’ve confirmed the effectiveness of this method. That’s interesting. And if that wasn’t enough to get you thinking about where Google might be headed, the opening paragraph of the paper’s introduction pretty much discredits links as a valuable signal:

    Quality assessment for web sources is of tremendous importance in web search. It has been traditionally evaluated using exogenous signals such as hyperlinks and browsing history. However, such signals mostly capture how popular a webpage is. For example, the gossip websites listed in mostly have high PageRank scores, but would not generally be considered reliable. Conversely, some less popular websites nevertheless have very accurate information.

    Curious about which “gossip sites” they’re referring to? Well, the section it points to points readers to this list of the top 15 most popular celebrity gossip sites, which include: Yahoo! OMG!, TMZ, E Online, People, USMagazine, WonderWall, Gawker, ZimBio, PerezHilton, HollywoodLife, RadarOnline, PopSugar, WetPaint, MediaTakeOut, and FishWrapper.

    Later in the paper, it notes that among these fifteen sites, fourteen have a PageRank among the top 15% of websites due to popularity, but for all of them, the KBT are in the bottom 50%.

    “In other words, they are considered less trustworthy than half of the websites,” it says. It also says that forum websites tend to get low KBT, specifically calling out an example of inaccurate info found on Yahoo Answers, which you’ve probably seen ranking highly in Google results repeatedly.

    The paper does also note that KBT as a signal is orthogonal to more traditional signals like PageRank. It also appears to hint at identifying content that is irrelevant to the main topic of a website.

    This all really just scratches the surface of what the paper itself gets into, so feel free to jump in there for a deeper dive into what we’re dealing with.

    In theory, what Google is proposing here could lead to some major improvements to search rankings. It makes some really good points. Chief among them is the one that popularity isn’t necessarily the best indicator of relevance.

    Questions will remain, however, about just how well Google really is able to distinguish fact from fiction and/or fact versus outdated information. We’ve seen Google struggle with this time and time again with its Knowledge Graph. If Google’s “knowledge” is to become the backbone of ranking in the way that PageRank has been historically, it could open the algorithm up to potential errors.

    That said, given that Google uses so many signals, and this would still just be one of them, I personally feel like this could be a more legitimate signal than PageRank. It’s been well-documentecd how links can be manipulated while Google plays whack-a-mole both manually and algorithmically. This might be harder for evildoers to game. Facts would certainly be harder to buy, although you have to wonder how the native advertising/sponsored content industry will play into this.

    For now, it’s all theoretical anyway. You should really be more concerned with getting your site mobile-friendly. This is an actual signal Google will launch next month. If you have an Android app, you should get it set up for app indexing. These are the things that can make a difference in the near term.

    Do you want to see Google take the fact-over-PageRank approach? Let us know in the comments.

  • How To Set Up App Indexing For Ranking In Google

    How To Set Up App Indexing For Ranking In Google

    Last week, Google made two announcements about how it will rank search results on mobile devices going forward. The one that has received the greatest amount of attention is the inclusion of a mobile-friendly ranking signal, which will go into effect beginning April 21. This gives sites time to make sure their sites meet Googles criteria for being mobile-friendly, and to avoid a potential rankings hit. More on how to make your site more mobile-friendly here.

    The other announcement was that Google is now using information from indexed apps as a ranking factor for signed-in users who have the app installed. That’s already in effect.

    Do you have an Android app? Do you have it set up for app indexing? Let us know in the comments.

    Google said that as a result of this particular factor, it may now surface content from indexed apps more prominently in search.

    Google first began testing app indexing in the fall of 2013. Googlebot began indexing content in Android apps, and gave webmasters the ability to let Google know which app they’d like Google to index through their existing sitemaps file and through Webmaster tools.

    As the company explained at the time:

    “Searchers on smartphones experience many speed bumps that can slow them down. For example, any time they need to change context from a web page to an app, or vice versa, users are likely to encounter redirects, pop-up dialogs, and extra swipes and taps. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could give your users the choice of viewing your content either on the website or via your app, both straight from Google’s search results?”

    “If both the webpage and the app contents are successfully indexed, Google will then try to show deep links to your app straight in our search results when we think they’re relevant for the user’s query and if the user has the app installed. When users tap on these deep links, your app will launch and take them directly to the content they need.”

    Google said back then that app indexing would not impact ranking. Now it does.

    At first, Google only indexed a select few apps, including Allthecooks, AllTrails, Beautylish, Etsy, Expedia, Flixster, Healthtap, IMDB, Moviefone, Newegg, OpenTable, and Trulia. Last April, Google announced that it had enabled it for over 24 more applications, including: 500px, AOL, BigOven, Bleacher Report, Booking.com, Eventbrite, Glassdoor, Goodreads, Huffington Post, Merriam-Webster, Pinterest, Realtor.com, Seeking Alpha, TalkAndroid, TheFreeDictionary, The Journal, TripAdvisor, Tumblr, Urbanspoon, Wattpad, YP, Zagat, Zappos and Zillow.

    They also made it available globally in English. The following month, they made it available in more languages. At Google I/O last year, they announced a slew of additional apps, and opened app indexing up to all Android developers. If you have an Android app, you can participate. At the time, they also made some design tweaks to how apps appear.

    Also at Google I/O, the company held a session called “The Future of Apps and Search,” which discussed bringing search and apps together to give users a better experience. In light of the ranking news, you might want to give that a watch if you don’t already have app indexing implemented.

    Here’s a much shorter overview on getting your app in the Google index:

    In December, Google said clicks on app deep links jumped by 10x the prior quarter, with 15% of signed-in Google searches on Android now returning deep links. These numbers have likely only increased since then.

    There are four basic steps for enabling users who have your app installed to open your content within the app from Google search results: add deep link support, verify your app’s official site on the Google Play Console, provide deep links, and check for errors in Webmaster Tools, so you can fix them.

    You can find the documentation for adding deep linking support here. You have to specify intent filters in your app manifest that define how to reach specific content inside your app. Google walks you through this process in that link.

    You’ll then want to test your deep links using the Android Debug Bridge, which is a command line tool that lets you communicate with an emulator instance or connected Android-powered device.

    You’ll also want to restrict access to parts of your app content. This involves including a noindex.xml file in your app to indicate which deep links shouldn’t be indexed. You’ll be able to specify a list of URIs to exclude, or a list of URI prefixes. As Google notes, it’s similar to how the robots noindex meta tag works for websites.

    After you’ve added support, you’ll need to verify your website. Sign in to your Google Play Developer Console, click All Applications, select the app you want to verify, and select Services & APIs from the left menu. Under “App Indexing from Gogole Search,” cliick “Verify website.” Type your web address, and click “Verify”. Then, go to Webmaster Tools (requires “owner” permissions), and click “All Messages” from the left menu. Open the verification request message, approve it, and then your app will appear on the Associates page of your WMT account. You can then provide deep links for each web page that has a corresponding deep link.

    After verification, you’ll want to provide deep links for each page that has a corresponding deep link either on each page of your site or in your sitemaps. You can ffind documentation on this here.

    When adding deep links to your sitemap or webiste, Google says they should only be included for canonical web URLs, and to remember to specify an app deep link for your homepage. Not all website URLs in a sitemap need to have a corresponding app deep link, don’t include them for those that aren’t supported by your app. News sites using News Sitemaps should include deep link annotations in them as well as in general sitemaps. Google also says not to provide annotations for deep links that execute native ARM code. This enables app indexing to work for all platforms, it says.

    “When Google indexes content from your app, your app will need to make HTTP requests that it usually makes under normal operation,” Google’s Michael Xu said in a blog post last April. “These requests will appear to your servers as originating from Googlebot. Therefore, your server’s robots.txt file must be configured properly to allow these requests. Finally, please make sure the back button behavior of your app leads directly back to the search results page.”

    Information related to app indexing that Google shows in Webmaster Tools includes: errors in indexed pages within apps, weekly clicks and impressions from app deep links via Google search; and stats on your sitemap (if that’s how you implemented the app deep links). Google says it will be adding a lot more.

    There are two new ways to track performance for your app deep links. Google will send a weekly clicks and impressions update to the Message center in in WMT, and you can now track how much traffic app deep links drive to your app using referrer information (referrer extra in the ACTION_VIEW intent). The company said in December it was working to integrate this info with Google Analytics.

    “Blocked resources are one of the top reasons for the ‘content mismatch’ errors you see in Webmaster Tools’ Crawl Errors report,” said Google Webmaster Trends analyst Mariya Moeva. “We need access to all the resources necessary to render your app page. This allows us to assess whether your associated web page has the same content as your app page.”

    “To help you identify errors when indexing your app, we’ll send you messages for all app errors we detect, and will also display most of them in the ‘Android apps’ tab of the Crawl errors report,” Moeva said.

    At the time, Google announced three new error types that go along with the existing “content mismatch” and “intent URI not supported” error alerts: APK not found, no first-click free, and back button violation.

    Google has an app indexing “codelab” tutorial available here. This will walk you through running a sample app, opening a starter project, identifying deep links, adding intent filters, adding code to handle intent filters, testing intent filters, verifying the Google Play Service version, creating an API client, recording a page view, recording a page view end, testing Autocomplete in Google Search, adding app indexing markup, connecting the app using Google Play Console, verifying the app in Webmaster Tools, and updating robots.txt.

    Apps with or without corresponding webpages can use the App Indexing API to notify Google of their deep links. Documentation for this is available here.

    There’s also an app indexing checklist here. Additionally, you may want to peruse the FAQ.

    For now, Google only supports Android apps for app indexing. While it’s missing a huge chunk of popular apps by not supporting iOS, Android does dominate smart device operating system market share, mainly due to its wide use across a plethora of devices. According to new research from ABI, Android holds 53% of that market share.

    In other words, that’s a lot of potential visibility for app content in Google search results. It’s also possible that Google will eventually support iOS apps.

    “You’d have to imagine Google will bring support, despite Apple not probably making it easy, to iOS devices,” wrote Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz in December, as he pointed to a hint that Google may do just that.

    It’s not a major hint, but a Googler responded to a question in a Webmaster Help forum thread, saying, “app indexing is supported only for Android for now. Stay tuned for updates (:”

    Beyond making the content from existing Android apps more visible with its new ranking signal, it’s likely that the move will inspire more companies to create Android apps in the first place.

    Last week, Google announced the launch of paid search results in Google Play, which will also help app makers gain more exposure. This is only in the pilot stage for now, but will likely become a major feature available to Android users and advertisers.

    Google also won a bidding war for the .App TLD. It’s unclear what Google intends to do with that at this point.

    Are you taking advantage of Google’s app indexing? If so, have you noticed any ranking changes? If not, do you intend to? Discuss.

    Images via Google

  • Yahoo’s Search Market Growth Flatlines

    In November, Yahoo and Mozilla entered a partnership that made Yahoo the default search experience on Firefox, replacing Google, which had held the spot for the past decade. The deal showed some great early results for Yahoo in terms of search market share, and a month ago, StatCounter provided an update on that front, showing that Google had its lowest share in the U.S. since it’s been recording the data. Yahoo, on the other hand, reached its highest US search share in over five years.

    StatCounter now has data out for February, and while Yahoo’s growth has slowed, it has mostly been able to hang on to what it gained. Google took 74.9% of US search referrals followed by Bing on 12.5% and Yahoo on 10.7%, down from 10.9% in January.

    “While Yahoo’s search growth from the Mozilla deal has stalled, its share declined only slightly in February,”said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. “It will be interesting to see if January was the month of peak impact for Yahoo as a result of the Mozilla deal and whether it can maintain its gains over the next few months.”

    Just as it did last month, StatCounter also looked at search share by US Firefox, finding that in February, Google was at 65.1%, up a little from 63.9% in January, while Yahoo was at 27.3%, down from 28.3% (Bing was also down).

    It’s not a huge surprise that Google would gain a little back among these users as some probably just realized their default was no longer set to their search engine of preference. Google has also been pushing for users to change it back. Google has been promoting a video demonstrating how to change the default search experience:

    It has also been telling Firefox users who visit its homepage to set the default experience back to Google. It displays a message that says, “Get to Google faster. Make Google your default search engine.”

    Yahoo continues to display a link to “upgrade to the new Firefox” on its homepage and other properties as well.

    Yahoo’s latest decline in market share isn’t attributed to Firefox alone, StatCounter says, noting that general Yahoo usage in the US excluding Firefox users was also down from 8.2% in January to 8.1% in February.

    StatCounter says Firefox users generated 14% of US internet usage in February.

    About a month ago, reports indicated that Apple’s search deal with Google (which makes Google the default search experience on Safari) would expire “soon,” but it’s not clear exactly when that is. We haven’t heard anything yet, so presumably it hasn’t happened quite yet. Yahoo has expressed great interest in that deal, which would no doubt gain it an even more significant market share boost. CEO Marissa Mayer said this in a Q&A on the company’s earnings call at the end of January:

    The Safari platform is basically one of the premiere search engine in the world, if not the premiere search engine in the world. We are definitely in the search distribution business. I think we stated that really clearly in the past and I think with Mozilla and also in addition we brought Amazon and eBay onboard with smaller distribution partnerships in Q4, we are in search distribution business and anyone who is in that business needs to be interested in the Safari deal.

    The Safari users are among the most engaged and lucrative users in the world and it’s something that we would really like to be able to provide. We work really closely with Mozilla to ultimately bring to their users an experience that they designed and that they feel really suit those users and we welcome the opportunity with any other partner to do the same, particularly one with Apple’s volume and end user base.

    Google shared its thoughts in a more generic manner on its earnings call.

    Images via StatCounter, Google, Yahoo

  • How To Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly, According To Google

    How To Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly, According To Google

    As you’re probably aware, Google is preparing to launch an algorithm change that includes a signal telling Google sites that are mobile-friendly should get a rankings boost. This will remain just one of many signals Google takes into account when ranking content, but it’s going to be an important one.

    Is your site already mobile-friendly or do you have some work to do? Let us know in the comments.

    For one, if it were not important, Google probably wouldn’t have taken the time to pre-announce it on multiple occasions. It probably also wouldn’t be sending webmasters messages about their sites when they’re not mobile friendly. Even forgetting Google’s own messaging, it’s just common sense that this is an important signal. Many, many people spend the majority of their Internet time on their mobile devices, and many others still spend some of it that way. Mobile is not going away. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re doing yourself and your potential customers a disservice, regardless of how Google is ranking your content.

    “When it comes to search on mobile devices, users should get the most relevant and timely results, no matter if the information lives on mobile-friendly web pages or apps. As more people use mobile devices to access the internet, our algorithms have to adapt to these usage patterns,” Google says.

    The mobile-friendliness ranking signal will take effect starting April 21. Yes, Google has even given a date. That’s how serious they are about this one. They say it will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide, and have “a significant impact” in search results.

    So you have less than two months to make sure your site is ready to go before the update starts to roll out. How should you go about doing that? Well, you might want to start by utilizing Google’s Mobile-Friendly test tool. Use this to test individual URLs. If you have a basic template that’s used for the majority of your site’s content, that will probably help a great deal, but use it to test as much of your site as is realistic.

    First, go here. You may want to bookmark it if you have some work to do.

    Enter your URL, and hit “analyze”. Hopefully you’ll get something that looks like this, telling you your page is mobile-friendly:

    If the page is deemed mobile-friendly, Google tell you how Googlebot sees the page. It might say something like, “This page uses 9 resources which are blocked by robots.txt. The results and screenshot may be incorrect.”

    It will give you a link to expand such resources and get a look at what they actually are. It also gives you a link to learn how to unblock them for Googlebot.

    If your URL is not deemed mobile-friendly, Google will tell you specific reasons, as well as info about how Googlebot sees it, and resources to help you fix issues. Reasons a page isn’t mobile friendly might include things like: “content wider than screen,” “uses incompatible plugins,” “links too close together,” “text too small to read,” “mobile viewport not set,” etc.

    Google recommends the following platforms for creating new sites, and chances are you’re already using one of them: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Blogger, vBulletin, Tumblr, DataLife Engine, Magento, Prestashop, Bitrix, and Google Sites. Google provides a dedicated guide for each one of these platforms for making your site mobile-friendly. You can find each of these here.

    Google also gives the general guidelines of backing up your site before making any changes, updating your CMS to the latest version, making sure any custom themes you’re using are mobile-friendly, and reviewing support forums for the CMS to see what issues people might be having with the mobile versions of their sites

    To make sure a custom theme is mobile-friendly, view the theme from the admin panel of your CMS and look for words like “mobile” or “responsive” in the documentation, and if there’s a demo template available, put the URL into Google’s mobile-friendly test tool. Google also suggests making sure the template is fast by checking the Speed section of PageSpeed Insights and making sure the Speed section has no issues marked as “should fix”.

    To get into the technical details of making a site mobile-friendly, you’re going to want to take a look at the documentation on Google’s Web Fundamentals site. Here, you’ll find options for your first multi-device site and starting your site with the Web Starter kit.

    The former delves into creating your content and structure and making it responsive. The TL;DR of content creation as Google breaks it down, is: Identify the content you need first; Sketch out information architecture for narrow and wide viewports; and Create a skeleton view of the page with content but without styling. The TL;DR for making it responsive is as follows: Always use a viewport; Always start with a narrow viewport first and scale out; Base your breakpoints off when you need to adapt the content; and Create a high-level vision of your layout across major breakpoints.

    The Web Starter Kit section is broken into three parts: Set Up Web Starter Kit, Development Phases, and How to Use the Style Guide.

    Of course even though these documents are long, you’re probably still going to want to read them.

    Then there’s the Mobile SEO guide. This is separated into four parts: Choose your mobile configuration; Signal your configuration to search engines; Avoid common mistakes; and Configure for other devices.

    The “Choose your mobile configuration” section deals with understanding different devices and key points in going mobile, selecting mobile configuration, and answers frequently asked questions. The “Signal your configuration to search engine” section talks about responsive web design, dynamic serving, and separate URLs.

    The “common mistakes” part talks about blocking JavaScript, CSS and image files, unplayable content, faulty redirects, mobile-only 404s, app download interstitials, irrelevant cross-links, and slow mobile pages. That last part talks about configuring for tablets and feature phones (when Google says mobile, it’s referring to smartphones).

    This whole mobile SEO guide is far too extensive to get into here, but you do need to know about it, and you’re going to want to go through it and make sure you’re not overlooking anything.

    “Design your site to help make it easier for your customer to complete their most common tasks: from task conception, to visiting your site, to task completion,” Google says. “Outline the potential steps in your customers’ journey to make sure the steps are easy to complete on a mobile device. Try to streamline the experience and reduce the number of user interactions.”

    “Making a mobile site requires prioritization,” it says. “Start by working out what the most important and common tasks are for your customers on mobile. Being able to support these tasks is critical and this is why the measure of your mobile site is how well customers can complete their objectives. There are ways to make the design of your site support ease of use too. Focus on consistency in your interface and providing an unified experience across platforms.”

    Many site owners are simply going to have to get outside help. Google knows this, and also offers advice for working with developers. While Google elaborates here, it recommends asking to see your developer’s references and portfolio of mobile sites, making sure they understand your mobile customer, asking them to make a commitment to speed, having them install web analytics, making sure they’re aware of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and making sure the contract includes improving the mobile site after the initial launch.

    It’s entirely possible to make a site mobile-friendly for no extra money. This is the case if you have skills required to implement the steps from Google’s guides discussed above or if you are able to use a responsive theme. Things can get more expensive if you have to hire the developer, so some sites are going to have to make a big choice.

    Google says the top three mistakes beginners will want to avoid when it comes to creating a mobile-friendly site, are: forgetting their mobile customer; implementing the mobile site on a different domain, subdomain, or subdirectory from the desktop site; and working in isolation rather than looking around for inspiration. In other words, keep an eye on what others are doing.

    Google has additional resources available with its Mobile Playbook, Think with Google for the Mobile Platform, and its Multi-Screen Success Stories.

    Having a mobile-friendly site is good for more than just Google rankings. It’s good for your site visitors, and could mean the difference in getting a conversion or not. The search visibility will also help in that area, and it’s also likely that it will end up helping you in other search engines besides Google. None of them are going to want to point their users to inefficient pages.

    Do you plan on making changes to your website due to Google’s coming change? Let us know in the comments.

    Images via Google

  • Google Expands Paid Search Into A New, Obvious Place

    Google announced the launch of paid search results on Google Play, which will help app makers get their products discovered and help Google add another revenue source.

    Google is only making the offering available to a limited set of users at first (from a pilot group of advertisers). This will happen over the course of the coming weeks.

    “App discovery plays a critical role in driving your continued success, and over the past year Google has provided best practices to enhance app discovery and engagement, as well as app promotion tools to get the most out of search and display advertising for developers,” says Google Play product management director Michael Siliski. “We are always looking for new ways to help you get your apps in front of potential new users. That’s why, in the next few weeks, we will begin piloting sponsored search results on Google Play, bringing our unique expertise in search ads to the store.”

    It probably has something to do with that revenue thing too. Google will make money on the ads while continuing to make money on app sales.

    Paid search in Google Play is not something I’ve ever given much thought to, but thinking about it now, it’s actually really surprising that Google is just now getting the ball rolling on this. Google Play hosts a reported 1.72 million apps.

    As Miguel Helft at Forbes writes in an interview with Google’s Sundar Pichai:

    Search advertising has been the most profitable big business in the history of the Internet, generating billions in annual revenue and income for Google. After applying it to Web search, Google expanded it to queries made on YouTube. Pichai said that by using the same model on Google Play, the company will capitalize on the app store’s growing momentum.

    “With more than 100 billion searches every month on Google.com, we’ve seen how search ads shown next to organic search results on Google.com can significantly improve content discovery for users and advertisers, both large and small,” he adds. “Search ads on Google Play will enable developers to drive more awareness of their apps and provide consumers new ways to discover apps that they otherwise might have missed.”

    According to Marketing Land paid media reporter Ginny Marvin, Google’s pilot test will only include app marketers, who are currently using AdWords, but their campaigns won’t be tied together on the front end. The ability to buy Google Play apps in AdWords may come later, she says.

    The company says it will be sharing more about the expansion of the new Google Play paid results in the coming months as it analyzes feedback and the results of the initial phase.

    Ryan Whitwam at Android Police writes, “In the early days of Android, developers had to be serious nerds to pay the platform any real attention. After all, the real money was on iOS…Developers will probably be happy to have better promotional tools in the Play Store, but things are going well already.”

    Google says Google Play reaches over a billion people in over 190 countries. They’ve paid $7 billion to developers (compared to a reported $10 billion annually paid by Apple to iOS developers).

    Kevin Tofel, who covers mobile for GigaOm, says Google’s paid search results will probably be more appealing to those who offer paid apps, but adds that even those with free apps “might be willing to splurge on ads for their software and work toward in-app purchases for revenues.”

    He also makes the point that smaller developers with limited funds will be at a disadvantage to larger ones with bigger bankrolls.

    Ultimately, however, Google’s news should prove huge for the Android developer ecosystem over time. Think about what paid search has done for business discovery over the years, and apply it to mobile apps. For niche apps, it could be game-changing.

    Google isn’t giving numbers on how many searches the Play Store gets, which is unfortunate, because it would surely be nice to know for all parties involved.

    Image via Google

  • Google Tests B2C Chat From Search Results

    Google Tests B2C Chat From Search Results

    Google is testing a new feature for businesses, which would enable them to live chat with prospective customers when the user finds them in search results.

    The feature appears to have been first spotted by Matt Gibstein, who pointed it out on Twitter. He shows a screenshot of it showing for Dizengoff:

    This appears for me as well if I search specifically for “Dizengoff”.

     

    Unlike Gibstein’s screenshot, I’m actually getting an error message from Google when I click the chat link:

     

    The feature is supposed to launch a chat window using Google Hangouts when the business is available. TechCrunch says it confirmed with Google that business chat is an experimental feature that it’s testing. Darrell Etherington reports:

    The new experimental chat feature offers a direct text-based line of communication, in this case with a restaurant, so that you could theoretically ask if it’s currently busy, if there’s a reservation available, or menu-specific queries, for example, and receive an answer in real-time.

    Etherington adds that the feature includes an estimated time for response.

    This could be a major feature for businesses, and could hurt other services (like Path or even Yelp) with similar offerings.

    Businesses would no doubt be happy for the chance to interact with people who are actively searching for them. It’s unclear whether or not the feature would be free to businesses or only available for a fee. In response to Gibstein’s tweet, one person suggested that it could be “free until your business relies on it”.

    At this point in time, it’s just a test, and it may never see the light of day as a real feature. If it does, it could go a long way in adding value to Google searches both for businesses and for consumers.

    Images via Google

  • Yahoo Mail Gets New Search Features

    Yahoo announced the launch of some new search features for Yahoo Mail including easier folder search, refined search, and search suggestions.

    “Your inbox is the perfect digital memory – from photos to documents, travel plans to shopping orders, events and more, it holds so much information about your personal life,” says product manager Abhinav Anand. “Yet, when you need something you know is there, the experience traditionally hasn’t been great. Our goal is to make it simple and easy to find what you’re looking for.”

    With the new folder search, you can search any folder from the search bar, and select it right from the drop down menu. You can also select it fro the left column.

    “You can now refine searches based on who sent them and the words they contain,” says Anand. “Say you’re looking for emails about an upcoming trip to San Francisco with a friend. Now simply type your friend’s name, followed by “San Francisco” in the search box. Yahoo Mail recognizes your friend’s name and shows you every email with that friend containing “San Francisco” in an easy-to-read results page.”

    The new search suggestions are “intelligently” suggested with gray text while you type. It will display people and recent search suggestions, which you can select by hitting the tab key. If you select a person, it will display a custom search results page featuring messages, documents, and photos yo’ve sent or received from them.

    Earlier this week, Yahoo announced a new suite of products for mobile developers, which will see Yahoo search functionality expanded to third-party mobile apps. Combined with its Mozilla Firefox browser deal, Yahoo is making significant moves to get more people using Yahoo Search.

    Images via Yahoo

  • ‘Marlboro Mascot’ Yields a Funny Google Search Result Thanks to John Oliver

    If you search for “Marlboro Mascot’ right now in Google, the first result you’ll see is an cartoon diseased lung smoking a cigarette.

    That’s Jeff, and according to HBO’s John Oliver, he should be the new Marlboro mascot.

    Oliver spent Sunday night’s episode of Last Week Tonight skewering Marlboro, along with various other players in the big tobacco game. At the end, he asked viewers to help promote a new Marlboro Man of sorts – a giant, pink, diseased lung with a cowboy hat. This, according to Oliver, is a good compromise between Marlboro, who wants to promote its cowboy image, and various countries, who wish to label cigarettes as deadly lung-killers.

    Thanks to Oliver and all the articles and searches prompted by his segment, here’s what you see when you search “Marlboro Mascot” in Google Images.

    Unfortunately, Jeff the Diseased Lung is nowhere to be found on searches for “Marlboro” and “Marlboro Man”. Just give it time.

    Philip Morris International has released a lengthy statement on John Oliver’s segment, saying that he gets laughs through “exaggeration and presenting partial views in the name of humor.”

    “The segment includes many mischaracterizations of our company, including our approach to marketing and regulation, which have been embellished in the spirit of comedic license. While we recognize the tobacco industry is an easy target for comedians, we take seriously the responsibility that comes with selling a product that is an adult choice and is harmful to health,” says PMI.

    Meanwhile, Jeff continues to take over Google Image search.

    Image via Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, YouTube

  • Google Facing Another Antitrust Probe – in Russia

    Google is facing another antitrust investigation, as Russian search company Yandex has asked the country’s Federal Anti-Monopoly Service to take a look at Google’s practices – specifically relating to Android.

    Yandex is upset by Google’s bundling of its search engine, as well as other apps in with its Android operating system – which comes equipped on 86 percent of smartphones sold in Russia.

    Yandex has issued a statement on the request:

    Google’s practices relating to Android have been the subject of investigations and lawsuits in many jurisdictions around the world. Google is the owner of Android, the dominant global mobile operating system. Many believe that Android is an open platform. In reality, manufacturers of Android-powered devices are locked into the proprietary Google Play application store and closed APIs. In order to install Google Play on their devices, device manufacturers are required to preinstall the entire suite of Google GMS services, and set Google as the default search. In addition to that, device manufacturers are increasingly prohibited from installing any services from Google’s competitors on their devices.

    A Yandex spokesperson elaborated on that, saying,

    “We believe that device manufacturers should have a choice as to which search provider to set as the default or which services to have preinstalled on the device. Google should not prevent manufacturers from preinstalling competitor apps. This is why we are talking about the need to unbundle Google’s Android operating system from Google Search and its other end-user services.”

    If these claims sounds familiar, it’s because Google is already facing this sort of challenge elsewhere. The European Union has been after Google on this front for years, with its focus on Android ramping up recently. Recently, the European Parliament approved a breakup of the company – but that doesn’t mean it’s a done deal. The European Commission are the regulators with that authority, and it’s still debating the issue.

    Read more: Should Google Be Broken Up?

    Image via YouTube

  • What Google’s Twitter Deal Means For You

    What Google’s Twitter Deal Means For You

    News came out last week that Google and Twitter have struck a new deal to put real-time tweets back into Google’s search index. The companies aren’t providing much in the way of details about the deal at this point, and it’s possible that they never will, but they did confirm the deal, and indicate that it will go into effect in a few months.

    Do you expect to benefit from the deal? Tell us what you think about it in the comments.

    Years ago, when the two companies had a similar relationship, Google had a search feature called Realtime Search, which displayed a set of scrolling results at the top of the search results page on some queries (typically newsy ones). The feature didn’t rely solely on Twitter. It incorporated other sources, but it was clear that Twitter was the one that really mattered, especially when the whole feature went away upon the expiration of the companies’ initial deal.

    Ever since that fell apart, Google has been lacking in the real-time department. In the early days of Google+, it seemed like Google thought it might be able to replace Twitter with its own real-time content, but obviously that never materialized to the extent of what Twitter has to offer. Meanwhile, Google would continue to index tweets in its regular search results, but it would never be able to index them in real time, and the ones it did index would only be a small percentage of the larger tweet pool.

    Eric Enge’s Stone Temple Consulting released some new findings about how Google indexes tweets currently, which provides some insight into how things may change when the new deal goes into effect. His team analyzed over 133,000 tweets to see how Google indexed them, and found that about 7.4% of them were actually indexed, leaving 92.6% completely left out of the search engine.

    That tells us a great deal right there. Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” As we’ve discussed in the past, Google is essentially failing that mission without Twitter’s firehose. Today, the world’s information is coming at us in extremely rapid fashion, and as far as public information goes (Facebook is working to do more with the non-public stuff), Twitter is the best provider of that rapid-fire info. How can Google possibly succeed in its stated mission if it’s only organizing a little over 7% of that information?

    Stone Temple’s findings suggest that Twitter accounts with larger follower counts are getting more tweets indexed, though it may be only a correlation. Enge says he doesn’t think Google is looking specifically at follower count, but that other signals are affecting which profiles get indexed more (i.e. links to those accounts’ profiles). Either way, he notes, more value is clearly being placed on the authoritative accounts.

    Out of the accounts with over a million followers that the research looks at, there were 13,435 tweets with 21% of them being indexed by Google. Out of 44,318 tweets in the 10K to 1M follower range, only 10% were indexed. For 80,842 tweets from accounts with less than 10,000 followers, just 4% were indexed.

    Stone Temple says images and/or hashtags seem to increase a tweet’s chances of getting indexed with percentages registering higher than average. Mentions, on the other hand, register negatively. It also points to another of its studies, which showed that links from third-party sites have a significant impact.

    “Google still loves links. 26% of the tweets with an inbound link from sites other than Twitter got indexed. That is nearly 4 times as much as the overall average rate of indexation,” Enge says in the report, adding that link quantity correlates highly with a tweet getting indexed.

    They found that out of 21 accounts and 91 tweets with with over 100 inbound links, 46% were indexed. The number goes down the less inbound links there are. Those with less than ten links only saw a 7% index rate.

    Be sure to check out the research for additional findings.

    Following the release of this research, we did a Q&A with Enge:

    Do you think Google will re-implement the kind of real-time scrolling results feature at the top of search results like it used to have with its old Twitter deal?

    Enge: Not really, I don’t think that this is what Google is looking for. I suspect that the UI impact will be minimal, but that more tweets will get indexed. However (and this is a big however), what will really be interesting to see is if Google uses tweet data to help drive personalization in one fashion or another. One simple way to do this? Simply favor content that people link to from their tweets in future related search results.

    This type of prioritization is similar to what they do with Google+ already. This is just speculation on my part, but I think it could be a huge win for Google if this deal gives them enough visibility to allow them to do that.

    Under the deal, do you think we’ll see a lot more brand new tweets appearing HIGH in search results? Do you expect the freshness of a tweet to be heavily factored into Google’s ranking signals when indexing tweets?

    Enge: Great question. What our study showed is that Google currently places minimal impact on freshness of tweets today. Perhaps when crawling needs to be done to discover them it’s just not worth it, and it might be that the new deal will change that. However, I suspect that it’s not the tweets themselves that Google really values the most, but the content they link to that Google wants to discover more quickly. That said, if they see a tweet getting major engagement, chances probably would go up that this tweet will show up higher in the results.

    The study suggests that tweets with images and/or hashtags have a better shot at getting indexed, and those with mentions have less of a shot. It’s acknowledged that this may or may not be simply a correlation. What does your gut tell you?

    Enge: I think it’s real. Bear in mind that the study we published in December on Twitter engagement also shows that images and hashtags have a positive impact on user engagement. This means that people see them as more valuable, and Google wants to place more value on the content that users value the most. So, my gut tells me that this is actually a causal situation, not just a correlation.

    When the study is talking about the impact of 3rd party sites linking to tweets as something Google likes, are we talking primarily about tweets that are being embedded on these sites, just plain old links, or a combination of the two?

    Enge: As you may know, there are many sites out there that simply replicate lots of tweets on their sites. I am not sure what value they serve, or if any people actually visit such sites. But, some of the links tweets get come from such sites, and my bet is that Google ignores those.

    However, there are other sites that may reference tweets within a blog post or article, and link in a clean traditional web link based fashion to the URL for the tweet itself (what you referred to as “plain old links”). It is these links that I believe that Google is placing a high value on.

    How do you expect Google to react to promoted tweets? Let’s say Google indexes your tweet when it’s organic, but then you decide to promote it? At that point, Google is basically indexing an ad. Will Google shy away from indexing promoted tweets altogether?

    Enge: If a promoted tweet gets a ton of engagement, as well as external links, I think that it might still get indexed and rank, but I’d expect that the threshold will be higher than it is for organic tweets. I don’t have any science for that answer, but it is my sense as to how they will treat it.

    Your site uses “tweetable quotes” throughout its content. Has this been particularly effective for increasing Twitter traffic? Have you measured this specifically or are you familiar with any studies that have?

    Enge: Mark Traphagen pushed us into doing this, and makes sure all of our posts include these. He also tracks it very closely. Within 5 hours of the Twitter indexing study going live today, 67 people have already used the click to tweet boxes to generate tweets, and this has driven 207 unique clicks to the article. Pretty valuable I’d say!

    Would you recommend sites use this more in light of the Google deal?

    Enge: Yes! People do respond to the click to tweet boxes and that helps us get more tweet-love for our articles, and more visits. We use ClickToTweet.com for this, but there are other good services out there. Note that to make this look nice, Mark figured out a process to take the ClickToTweet link and embed it in an image as well.

    …

    All great stuff to know. Enge gives us some incredibly valuable insight as usual. Again, don’t forget to check out Stone Temple’s study.

    Are you looking forward to seeing Google indexing Tweets in real time again? Let us know in the comments.

    Image via StoneTemple.com

  • Google Starts Returning Quick Medical Facts

    Google is about to start displaying more medical information in its Knowledge Graph, enabling users to quickly search and retrieve important health info without necessarily having to click through to other sites. The company says it has been working with a team of doctors led by its own Dr. Kapil Parakh, M.D., MPH, Ph.D. to compile, curate, and review the information it shows.

    “All of the gathered facts represent real-life clinical knowledge from these doctors and high-quality medical sources across the web, and the information has been checked by medical doctors at Google and the Mayo Clinic for accuracy,” says product manager Prem Ramaswami. “That doesn’t mean these search results are intended as medical advice. We know that cases can vary in severity from person to person, and that there are bound to be exceptions. What we present is intended for informational purposes only—and you should always consult a healthcare professional if you have a medical concern.”

    “Think of the last time you searched on Google for health information,” Ramaswami says. “Maybe you heard a news story about gluten-free diets and pulled up the Google app to ask, ‘What is celiac disease?’ Maybe a co-worker shook your hand and later found out she had pink eye, so you looked up ‘pink eye’ to see whether it’s contagious. Or maybe you were worried about a loved one—like I was, recently, when my infant son Veer fell off a bed in a hotel in rural Vermont, and I was concerned that he might have a concussion. I wasn’t able to search and quickly find the information I urgently needed (and I work at Google!).”

    Ramaswami says his son was indeed OK (hopefully a doctor’s assessment rather than Google’s), and notes that 1 in 20 Google searches is health-related.

    The new information sounds like a major step up from what Google has offered in the past. Before the Panda update, there were some pretty questionable articles ranking for some health-related queries. We’re talking brain cancer articles from eHow written by non-medical professionals.

    Google has been working on improving health search for years. In February fo 2012, the company started displaying lists of possible health conditions when the searcher typed a query for a symptom.

    Interestingly enough, results for that same query look more like an old school SERP these days:

    Later that year, Google added new medical info to the Knowledge Graph, specifically for medications:

    The following year, the Knowledge Graph began to show nutrition information for foods:

    The latest Knowledge Graph additions seem like a major improvement to Google’s health-related search results. It’s good that all of this information is being reviewed by a team of doctors before inclusion, which would suggest a better review process than some of the other Knowledge Graph info has been subjected to in the past.

    Still, if it’s important, don’t rely on Google.

    Images via Google

  • Should Europe’s Search Law Apply To The World?

    Late last year, EU regulators in Brussels said they wanted the controversial “Right to be Forgotten” ruling applied to search results on a global basis rather than just in its own jurisdiction as it stands today. In other words, if someone is successfully able to get Google (or other search engines) to remove search results about them from its index in Europe, regulators want the search engine to remove the results from all of its localized versions, including Google.com.

    Do you think results should be removed all over the world or should it be limited to Europe? Let us know what you think.

    Obviously this is a tricky subject since it leads to censorship of results in other countries with different laws.

    The Google Advisory Council on the Right to be Forgotten weighed in on the subject in a report. This is who the council is made up of (you can click the image to be taken to the official site, where you can read each person’s bio):

    The report looks at an overview of the ruling, the criteria for assessing delisting requests, and procedural elements. One section deals specificalliy with the geographic scope issue. Here’s what that part says:

    A difficult question that arose throughout our meetings concerned the appropriate geographic scope for processing a delisting. Many search engines operate different versions that are targeted to users in a particular country, such as google.de for German users or google.fr for French users. The Ruling is not precise about which versions of search a delisting must be applied to. Google has chosen to implement these removals from all its European-directed search services, citing the CJEU’s authority across Europe as its guidance.

    The Council understands that it is a general practice that users in Europe, when typing in www.google.com to their browser, are automatically redirected to a local version of Google’s search engine. Google has told us that over 95% of all queries originating in Europe are on local versions of the search engine. Given this background, we believe that delistings applied to the European versions of search will, as a general rule, protect the rights of the data subject adequately in the current state of affairs and technology.

    In considering whether to apply a deslistng to versions of search targeted at users outside of Europe, including globally, we acknowledge that doing so may ensure more absolute protection of a data subject’s rights. However, it is the conclusion of the majority that there are competing interests that outweigh the additional protection afforded to the data subject. There is a competing interest on the part of users outside of Europe to access information via name-based search in accordance with the laws of their country, which may be in conflict with the deslistings afforded by this Ruling. These considerations are bolstered by the legal principle of proportionality and extraterritoriality in application of European law.

    There is also a competing interest on the pat of users within Europe to access versions of search other than their own. The Council heard evidence about the technical possibility to prevent Internet users in Europe from accessing search results that have been delisted under European law. The Council has concerns about the precedent set by such measures, particularly if repressive regimes point to such a precedent in an effort to ‘lock’ their users into heavily censored versions of search results. It is also unclear whether such measures would be meaningfully more effective than Google’s existing model, given the widespread availability of tools to circumvent such blocks.

    The Council supports effective measures to protect the rights of data subjects. Given concerns of proportionality and practical effectiveness, it concludes that removal from nationally directed versions of Google’s search services within the EU is the appropriate means to implement the Ruling at this stage.

    In other words, with the overwhelming majority of Google users in Europe using localized versions of Google, it wouldn’t really be all that more effective in hiding results in question by removing them from other versions of Google outside of Europe. By doing so, search results would be unnecessarily censored in parts of the world (like the U.S.) where laws cater to open access of public information and media reports.

    Here’s the full report:

    Do you agree with the Council that the right to be forgotten should only apply to the European-based versions of Google and other search engines or do you think results should be removed from search engines on a global basis? Let us know in the comments.

  • Twitter Talks Google Deal, Says User Growth Trend Already Turned Around This Year

    Twitter Talks Google Deal, Says User Growth Trend Already Turned Around This Year

    Twitter reported its Q4 and fiscal year 2014 financial results on Thursday, with 97% year-over-year revenue growth for the quarter at $479 million. Ad revenue per thousand timeline views reached $2.37 in the quarter, which was up 60% year-over-year. The company managed to impress with its business, but continued to disappoint in the user growth department, which is an area the company has been heavily criticized over since going public.

    Average Monthly Active Users (MAUs) were 288 million for the fourth quarter, which was an increase of 20% year-over-year. The company noted that this reflects a loss of about 4 million net Monthly Active Users in the quarter due to changes in third party integrations (specifically iOS 8). Users grew at a rate of just 1.4 for the quarter compared to 4.8% the prior quarter. Average Mobile MAUs were 80% of total MAUs. Timeline views reached 182 billion for the quarter (up 23% year-over-year). Twitter sees 6,000 tweets per minute every day, according to the company.

    All in all, Twitter added 4 million users during the quarter and 47 million throughout 2014. CEO Dick Costolo said on the earnings call that user numbers the company saw in January of this year indicate its MAU trend has already been turned around. He indicated that new Twitter features like native video, group messaging, and Instant Timeline (which populates the timelines of new users) should contribute to an upward trend. He also mentioned the company’s recent acquisition of ZipDial, which he said it will use to bring more content (like key moments and commentary from the Cricket World Cup) to a much larger audience on Twitter.

    Twitter is also doing a lot to build its developer ecosystem, as Costolo also brought up. This should lead to new apps and services that can contribute to user growth. Last fall, the company unveiled its new Fabric developer kits and Digits sign-in. This year, the company has already embarked on a developer tour called Flock, which will see the company helping developers build apps.

    Costolo said during the Q&A portion of Twitter’s earnings conference call that he could confirm that Twitter has entered into an agreement with Google, but declined to elaborate on any more details about it. In the past, the two companies have worked together to show tweets in real time in Google’s search results. From the sound of it this is what’s going to happen again, though it remains to be seen if it will function the same way. Either way, it’s going to get tweets in front of people more often, and that can’t hurt user growth.

    During the call, Costolo was asked why a Google deal didn’t make sense any longer when the two companies grew apart a few years ago, and why it makes more sense now. His answer (via Seeking Alpha) was as follows:

    We’ve obviously had a relationship with Google over the course of the years with all the bunch of the executives here and a bunch of the executives there obviously know each other quite well.

    I would say that the way we think about the Google deal now without again — without going into any of the details distinct from the kind of relationship we had in the past is that we’ve got the opportunity now to drive a lot of attention to an aggregate eye balls if you will to these logged out experiences, topics and events that we plan on delivering on the front page of Twitter. And that’s one of the reasons this makes a lot more sense for us now.

    He also made clear that we won’t see a launch from the deal for several months.

    As one analyst mentioned, the Google deal should have an impact on Twitter’s revenue in terms of licensing, but the company declined to discuss that for the time being.

    Regarding the iOS 8 changes that impacted Twitter’s user base, CFO Anthony Noto said:

    So we said we lost four million monthly active users due to the iOS8 integration. One million of those monthly active users were Twitter owned and operated monthly active users and three million were on Safari, what we call Auto point MAU’s and we lost those.

    We don’t expect to get the three million Autopoint MAU’s in Safari back and that’s a non-Twitter owned and operated Autopoint MAU. The one million that number was actually higher at a different point in the quarter when we were able to bring it back down to just one.

    Costolo added:

    We obviously have a great relationship with Apple. I’ve talked about that at length over the course of the last two years. On the second part of what Anthony talked about there, there was unforeseen bug in the release of iOS8 as it relates to the specific Twitter integration into iOS that’s why it was particular to us. Once we understood the issue, we move just quickly as we could on multiple fronts to minimize its impact, but it wasn’t — it wasn’t a one size fits off fix, which is why you’ve seen some of the complexity that we talked about here in brining those users back. The problem was a complex and affected different users differently.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that while hitting a record low, Twitter’s user growth fell below Facebook’s for the first time. According to Re/code, Twitter has revoked access to user growth numbers from its employees.

    Image via Twitter

  • Firefox Deal Continues To Help Yahoo, Hurt Google

    Firefox Deal Continues To Help Yahoo, Hurt Google

    In November, Yahoo and Mozilla entered a partnership that made Yahoo the default search experience on Firefox, replacing Google, which had held the spot for the past decade. The deal showed some great early results for Yahoo in terms of search market share, but the question about whether or not people would switch back to Google remained. So far, it seems that many are choosing to stick with Yahoo.

    StatCounter just put out its latest report on the subject, and found that Google is at its lowest share in the US since it’s been recording the data.

    This is the first time Google has fallen below 75%, the firm says. Yahoo, on the other hand, reached its highest US search share in over five years. They’ve been tracking these stats since July 2008.

    “Some analysts expected Yahoo to fall in January as a result of Firefox users switching back to Google. In fact Yahoo has increased US search share by half a percentage point,” said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. “It will be fascinating to see if these gains continue.”

    StatCounter also looked specifically at U.S. search share by Firefox users finding that Yahoo-on-Firefox usage nearly tripled from November to January going from 9.9% to 28.3%. During that timeframe, Google fell from 81.9% to 63.9%.

    “When we removed Firefox usage from the US search data, Yahoo’s gains and Google’s losses were erased,” said Cullen. “This highlights the importance of the default search option and the significance of the upcoming Safari search deal for the major players.”

    And Yahoo is hungry for that Safari deal. Last week, Yahoo reported its Q4 earnings, and CEO Marissa Mayer talked about the Firefox deal and the coveted Safari spot.

    “The Safari platform is basically one of the premiere search engines in the world, if not the premiere search engine in the world,” she said during a Q&A session. “We are definitely in the search distribution business. I think we stated that really clearly in the past and I think with Mozilla and also in addition we brought Amazon and eBay onboard with smaller distribution partnerships in Q4, we are in search distribution business and anyone who is in that business needs to be interested in the Safari deal.”

    “The Safari users are among the most engaged and lucrative users in the world and it’s something that we would really like to be able to provide,” she added. “We work really closely with Mozilla to ultimately bring to their users an experience that they designed and that they feel really suit those users and we welcome the opportunity with any other partner to do the same, particularly one with Apple’s volume and end user base.”

    As far as Firefox goes, it’s going to be interesting to see the market share changes for this month after more people presumably upgrade to the latest version of the browser. Yahoo is still encouraging users to do so from its homepage. Meanwhile, Google is encouraging Firefox users to switch back.

    Google also reported its earnings last week, and vaguely commented on the Yahoo Firefox deal.

    CFO Patrick Pichette said:

    You’ve all heard the announcements about Mozilla. And so when we don’t comment on the details of any of our partnerships that we have, having said that, we continue to do two things that really matter. One is our users continue to actually go in, if they love Google, they will continue to find Google, whichever platform, whichever browser, and that’s really what we’ve focused on doing.

    And then the second piece is the way to win this in the long-term, right? It’s very simple. You just make wonderful products. And when you make wonderful products that are magical people will find them.

    And so that’s the strategy that we’re using and we just don’t comment on any of our – we’ve never commented on any of our deals, so we want comment on Mozilla either.

    Firefox users generated 14% of US internet usage in January according to StatCounter.

    Images via StatCounter

  • Google Responds To Yahoo’s Firefox Deal On Earnings Call

    Google Responds To Yahoo’s Firefox Deal On Earnings Call

    Google released its Q4 and fiscal year 2014 financial results on Thursday with full year revenue up 19% year-over-year at $66 billion and revenue of $18.1 billion for the quarter, which was a 15% year-over-year increase.

    During the company’s conference call, CFO and Senior Vice President Patrick Pichette was asked about the impact of Yahoo’s deal with Mozilla to replace Google as the default search experience in the Firefox browser. here’s what he had to say (via Seeking Alpha’s transcript):

    You’ve all heard the announcements about Mozilla. And so when we don’t comment on the details of any of our partnerships that we have, having said that, we continue to do two things that really matter. One is our users continue to actually go in, if they love Google, they will continue to find Google, whichever platform, whichever browser, and that’s really what we’ve focused on doing.

    And then the second piece is the way to win this in the long-term, right? It’s very simple. You just make wonderful products. And when you make wonderful products that are magical people will find them.

    And so that’s the strategy that we’re using and we just don’t comment on any of our – we’ve never commented on any of our deals, so we want comment on Mozilla either.

    The subject came up again a bit later in the call, and Pichette had a little more to say:

    So on the issue of partnerships, Google has a lot of partnerships, right, it’s got – it’s an anchor of our strategy, because that actually gives us distribution, distribution is good. And so we also we look for partnerships in many spaces.

    Partnerships have to be win-wins, and in that sense, right, we’ll always look for those combinations. But also at the end of the day, there’s a second piece of the strategy, which is, as I said earlier, building amazing product, because if you build the amazing products then people want to distribute you product.

    And so that’s why, we have a meet in the whole search team that actually do this amazing job through the knowledge graph and all of the other elements of search, and no matter what the device, no matter the location, no matter the time of day. If we give you the answer as you’re looking for and 10 clicks less than it was before and then even faster and better all the time, that’s what wins, and that’s the core of what we’re focused on, and then people will find the way to get the Google.

    So, yes, partnerships matter. But at the core of it, you need partnership, because you have a phenomenal product. And that’s what we’re going to continue to build this amazing company.

    Google has already been showing concern about losing Mozilla. It definitely matters. Google has been trying to get people to switch back with messages like this:

    And one on the Google homepage in the Firefox browser, which says, “Get to Google faster. Make Google your default engine.”

    Yahoo also reported its earnings this week, and Mayer talked more about her company’s deal with Mozilla. She appears to be quite excited about it, and is clearly thirsty for a similar partnership with Apple to replace Google as the default experience in Safari. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen. Microsoft and Google both want that too.

    Last week, Merkle | RKG released its Digital Marketing Report for Q4 2014, which looked at the impact of the Yahoo/Mozilla deal on paid search.

    “We’re now able to assess the impact of the deal on Yahoo’s share of Firefox paid search traffic, which grew from 12% at the beginning of December to 30% by the end of the year,” the report said. “However, digging deeper reveals that Yahoo’s share of Firefox 34 paid clicks has been in decline ever since the first big wave of updates in the second week of December. While the initial rollout saw Yahoo’s share rise to a peak of 43% on December 10th, that figure was just 36% by December’s end.”

    “This is primarily the result of users switching the default search engine of their browsers back to Google, as shown by the corresponding increase in Google’s share of Firefox 34 paid clicks throughout the month of December,” it added. “All in all, it appears the deal will move about 2% or less of total paid search traffic from Google to Yahoo. This is far less than the 10%+ of paid traffic that stands to be on the table if Safari default search were to change hands, which news outlets have reported is a possibility in 2015.”

    According to that report, Bing and Yahoo outpaced Google in paid search growth, not only because of the Yahoo Firefox deal, but also rapid growth from Bing Product Ads.

    Here’s Google’s full earnings release:

    MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – January 29, 2015 –  Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2014.

    “Google’s full year revenue for 2014 was $66 billion, up 19% year on year,” said Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google, “and this quarter, our revenue was $18.1 billion, despite strong currency headwinds.”

    Q4 Financial Summary

    Google Inc. reported consolidated revenues of $18.10 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2014, an increase of 15% compared to the fourth quarter of 2013. Google Inc. reports advertising revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In the fourth quarter of 2014, TAC totaled $3.62 billion, or 22% of advertising revenues.

    Operating income, operating margin, net income, and earnings per share (EPS) are reported on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. The non-GAAP measures, as well as free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, are described below and are reconciled to the corresponding GAAP measures at the end of this release.

    • GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $4.40 billion, or 24% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of $4.43 billion, or 28% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2013. Non-GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $5.60 billion, or 31% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income of $5.30 billion, or 34% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2013.
    • GAAP net income (including net income (loss) from discontinued operations) in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $4.76 billion, compared to $3.38 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013. Non-GAAP net income in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $4.74 billion, compared to $4.57 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013.
    • GAAP EPS (including impact from net income (loss) from discontinued operations) in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $6.91 on 688 million diluted shares outstanding, compared to $4.95 in the fourth quarter of 2013 on 682 million diluted shares outstanding. Non-GAAP EPS in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $6.88, compared to $6.70 in the fourth quarter of 2013.
    • Non-GAAP operating income and non-GAAP operating margin exclude stock-based compensation (SBC) expense from continuing operations. Non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS exclude SBC expense from continuing operations, net of the related tax benefits, as well as net income (loss) from discontinued operations.
    • In the fourth quarter of 2014, the expense related to SBC from continuing operations and the related tax benefits were $1,201 million and $255 million compared to $873 million and $184 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. In addition, net income from discontinued operations in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $967 million, compared to a net loss of $506 million in the fourth quarter of 2013.

    On October 29, 2014, we closed the sale of Motorola Mobile business. Financial results of Motorola Mobile are presented as Net income (loss) from discontinued operations on the Consolidated Statements of Income for the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2013 and 2014 through the date of sale.  The sale resulted in a gain of $740 million, net of tax, which was included in Net income (loss) from discontinued operations on the Consolidated Statements of Income for the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2014.  All references to results of our operations have been retroactively restated for all prior periods to exclude the results from Motorola Mobile.

    On April 2, 2014, we issued shares of Class C capital stock as a dividend to our stockholders. Except for the number of authorized shares and par value, all references to share and per share amounts have been retroactively restated for all prior periods shown to reflect the stock split, which was effected in the form of a stock dividend.

    Q4 Financial Highlights

    Revenues and Monetization – Google Inc. revenues for the quarter ended December 31, 2014 were $18.10 billion, representing a 15% increase over fourth quarter of 2013 revenues of $15.71 billion.

    Sites Revenues – Our sites generated revenues of $12.43 billion, or 69% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2014. This represents an 18% increase over fourth quarter 2013 sites revenues of $10.54 billion.

    Network Revenues – Our partner sites generated revenues of $3.72 billion, or 20% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2014.   This represents a 6% increase over fourth quarter 2013 network revenues of $3.52 billion.

    Other Revenues – Other revenues were $1.95 billion, or 11% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2014.  This represents a 19% increase over fourth quarter 2013 other revenues of $1.65 billion.

    International Revenues – Our revenues from outside of the United States totaled $10.23 billion, representing 56% of total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2014, compared to 58% in the third quarter of 2014 and 56% in the fourth quarter of 2013. Our revenues from the United Kingdom totaled $1.66 billion, representing 9% of total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2014, compared to 10% in the fourth quarter of 2013.

    Foreign Exchange Impact on Revenues – Excluding gains related to our foreign exchange risk management program, had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the third quarter of 2014 through the fourth quarter of 2014, our revenues in the fourth quarter of 2014 would have been $541 million higher. Excluding gains related to our foreign exchange risk management program, had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the fourth quarter of 2013 through the fourth quarter of 2014, our revenues in the fourth quarter of 2014 would have been $616 million higher. In the fourth quarter of 2014, we recognized a benefit of $148 million to revenues through our foreign exchange risk management program, compared to $3 million in the fourth quarter of 2013.

    Reconciliations of our non-GAAP international revenues excluding the impact of foreign exchange and hedging to GAAP international revenues are included at the end of this release.

    Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, increased approximately 14% over the fourth quarter of 2013 and increased approximately 11% over the third quarter of 2014. Sites paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads we serve on Google owned and operated properties across different geographies and devices including search, YouTube engagement ads like TrueView, and other owned and operated properties including Maps and Finance, increased approximately 25% over the fourth quarter of 2013 and increased approximately 18% over the third quarter of 2014. Network paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on non-Google properties participating in our AdSense for Search, AdSense for Content, and AdMob businesses, decreased approximately 11% over the fourth quarter of 2013 and decreased approximately 7% over the third quarter of 2014.

    Cost-Per-Click – Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, decreased approximately 3% over the fourth quarter of 2013 and decreased approximately 3% over the third quarter of 2014. Cost-per-click for Google sites decreased approximately 8% over the fourth quarter of 2013 and decreased approximately 8% over the third quarter of 2014. Network cost-per-click increased approximately 6% over the fourth quarter of 2013 and increased approximately 10% over the third quarter of 2014.

    Traffic Acquisition Costs – Traffic acquisition costs (TAC), the portion of revenues shared with Google’s partners, increased to $3.62 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014, compared to $3.31 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013. TAC as a percentage of advertising revenues was 22% in the fourth quarter of 2014, compared to 24% in the fourth quarter of 2013.

    The majority of TAC is related to amounts ultimately paid to our Network members, which totaled $2.66 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014. TAC also includes amounts paid to our distribution partners who distribute our browser or otherwise direct search queries to our website, which totaled $968 million in the fourth quarter of 2014.

    Other Cost of Revenues – Other cost of revenues, which is comprised primarily of data center operational expenses, content acquisition costs,  revenue share payments to mobile carriers and original equipment manufacturers, and hardware inventory costs, increased to $3.30 billion, or 18% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2014, compared to $2.94 billion, or 19% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2013.

    Operating Expenses – Operating expenses, other than cost of revenues, were $6.78 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014, or 37% of revenues, compared to $5.03 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013, or 32% of revenues.

    Depreciation and Loss on Disposal of Property and Equipment and Amortization Expenses – Depreciation and loss on disposal of property and equipment and amortization and impairment of intangibles and other assets were $1.27 billion for the fourth quarter of 2014, compared to $1.04 billion for the fourth quarter of 2013.

    Stock-Based Compensation (SBC) – In the fourth quarter of 2014, the total charge related to SBC from continuing operations was $1,201 million, compared to $873 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. We currently estimate SBC charges for grants made to employees prior to December 31, 2014 to be approximately $4.30 billion for 2015. This estimate does not include expenses to be recognized related to employee stock awards that are granted after December 31, 2014.

    Operating Income – GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $4.40 billion, or 24% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of $4.43 billion, or 28% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2013. Non-GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $5.60 billion, or 31% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income of $5.30 billion, or 34% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2013.

    Interest and Other Income, Net – Interest and other income, net, was $128 million in the fourth quarter of 2014, compared to $112 million in the fourth quarter of 2013.

    Income Taxes – Our effective tax rate was 16% for the fourth quarter of 2014.

    Net Income (Loss) from Discontinued Operations – Net income from discontinued operations in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $967 million, compared to a net loss of $506 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. Net income from discontinued operations in the fourth quarter of 2014 includes a gain of $740 million, net of tax, from the sale of Motorola Mobile business.

    Net Income – GAAP consolidated net income in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $4.76 billion, compared to $3.38 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013. Non-GAAP consolidated net income was $4.74 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014, compared to $4.57 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013. GAAP EPS in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $6.91 on 688 million diluted shares outstanding, compared to $4.95 in the fourth quarter of 2013 on 682 million diluted shares outstanding. Non-GAAP EPS in the fourth quarter of 2014 was $6.88, compared to $6.70 in the fourth quarter of 2013.

    Cash Flow and Capital Expenditures – Net cash provided by operating activities in the fourth quarter of 2014 totaled $6.36 billion, compared to $5.24 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013. In the fourth quarter of 2014, capital expenditures were $3.55 billion, the majority of which was for real estate purchases, production equipment, and data center construction. Free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, is defined as net cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures. In the fourth quarter of 2014, free cash flow was $2.81 billion compared to $2.98 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013.

    We expect to continue to make significant capital expenditures.

    A reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities, the GAAP measure of liquidity, is included at the end of this release.

    Cash – As of December 31, 2014, cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were $64.40 billion.

    Headcount – On a worldwide basis, we employed 53,600 full-time employees as of December 31, 2014, compared to 51,564 full-time employees as of September 30, 2014.

    WEBCAST AND CONFERENCE CALL INFORMATION

    A live audio webcast of Google’s fourth quarter and fiscal year 2014 earnings release call will be available at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html. The call begins today at 1:30 PM (PT) / 4:30 PM (ET). This press release, the financial tables, as well as other supplemental information including the reconciliations of certain non-GAAP measures to their nearest comparable GAAP measures, are also available on that site.

    We also announce investor information, including news and commentary about our business and financial performance, SEC filings, notices of investor events and our press and earnings releases, on our investor relations website (http://investor.google.com) and our investor relations Google+ page (https://plus.google.com/+GoogleInvestorRelations/posts).

    FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

    This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements include statements regarding our investments in areas of strategic focus, our expected SBC charges, and our plans to make significant capital expenditures. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. The potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from the results predicted include, among others, unforeseen changes in our hiring patterns and our need to expend capital to accommodate the growth of the business, as well as those risks and uncertainties included under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2013  and our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2014, which are on file with the SEC and are available on our investor relations website at investor.google.com and on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Additional information will also be set forth in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2014.  All information provided in this release and in the attachments is as of January 29, 2015, and we undertake no duty to update this information unless required by law.

    ABOUT NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES

    To supplement our consolidated financial statements, which are prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP, we use the following non-GAAP financial measures: non-GAAP operating income, non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP net income, non-GAAP EPS, free cash flow, and non-GAAP international revenues. The presentation of this financial information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for, or superior to, the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP. For more information on these non-GAAP financial measures, please see the tables captioned “Reconciliations of non-GAAP results of operations to the nearest comparable GAAP measures,” “Reconciliation from net cash provided by operating activities to free cash flow,” and “Reconciliation from GAAP international revenues to non-GAAP international revenues” included at the end of this release.

    We use these non-GAAP financial measures for financial and operational decision-making and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. Our management believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide meaningful supplemental information regarding our performance and liquidity by excluding certain expenses and expenditures that may not be indicative of our recurring core business operating results, meaning our operating performance excluding not only non-cash charges, such as SBC, but also discrete cash charges that are infrequent in nature. We believe that both management and investors benefit from referring to these non-GAAP financial measures in assessing our performance and when planning, forecasting, and analyzing future periods. These non-GAAP financial measures also facilitate management’s internal comparisons to our historical performance and liquidity as well as comparisons to our competitors’ operating results. We believe these non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors both because (1) they allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in its financial and operational decision-making and (2) they are used by our institutional investors and the analyst community to help them analyze the health of our business.

    Non-GAAP operating income and operating margin. We define non-GAAP operating income as operating income excluding expenses related to SBC, and, as applicable, other special items. Non-GAAP operating margin is defined as non-GAAP operating income divided by revenues. Google considers these non-GAAP financial measures to be useful metrics for management and investors because they exclude the effect of SBC, and as applicable, other special items so that Google’s management and investors can compare Google’s recurring core business operating results over multiple periods. Because of varying available valuation methodologies, subjective assumptions and the variety of award types that companies can use under FASB ASC Topic 718, Google’s management believes that providing a non-GAAP financial measure that excludes SBC allows investors to make meaningful comparisons between Google’s recurring core business operating results and those of other companies, as well as providing Google’s management with an important tool for financial and operational decision making and for evaluating Google’s own recurring core business operating results over different periods of time. There are a number of limitations related to the use of non-GAAP operating income versus operating income calculated in accordance with GAAP. First, non-GAAP operating income excludes some costs, namely, SBC, that are recurring. SBC has been and will continue to be for the foreseeable future a significant recurring expense in Google’s business. Second, SBC is an important part of our employees’ compensation. Third, the components of the costs that we exclude in our calculation of non-GAAP operating income may differ from the components that our peer companies exclude when they report their results of operations. Management compensates for these limitations by providing specific information regarding the GAAP amounts excluded from non-GAAP operating income and evaluating non-GAAP operating income together with operating income calculated in accordance with GAAP.

    Non-GAAP net income and EPS. We define non-GAAP net income as net income excluding expenses related to SBC and, as applicable, other special items less the related tax effects, as well as net income (loss) from discontinued operations. The tax effects of SBC and, as applicable, other special items are calculated using the tax-deductible portion of SBC, and, as applicable, other special items, and applying the entity-specific, U.S. federal and blended state tax rates.  We define non-GAAP EPS as non-GAAP net income divided by the weighted average outstanding shares, on a fully-diluted basis. We consider these non-GAAP financial measures to be useful metrics for management and investors for the same reasons that Google uses non-GAAP operating income and non-GAAP operating margin. However, in order to provide a complete picture of our recurring core business operating results, we exclude from non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS the tax effects associated with SBC and, as applicable, other special items. Without excluding these tax effects, investors would only see the gross effect that excluding these expenses had on our operating results. The same limitations described above regarding Google’s use of non-GAAP operating income and non-GAAP operating margin apply to our use of non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS. Management compensates for these limitations by providing specific information regarding the GAAP amounts excluded from non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS and evaluating non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS together with net income and EPS calculated in accordance with GAAP.

    Free cash flow. We define free cash flow as net cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures. We consider free cash flow to be a liquidity measure that provides useful information to management and investors about the amount of cash generated by the business that, after the acquisition of property and equipment, including information technology infrastructure and land and buildings, can be used for strategic opportunities, including investing in our business, making strategic acquisitions, and strengthening the balance sheet. Analysis of free cash flow also facilitates management’s comparisons of our operating results to competitors’ operating results. A limitation of using free cash flow versus the GAAP measure of net cash provided by operating activities as a means for evaluating Google is that free cash flow does not represent the total increase or decrease in the cash balance from operations for the period because it excludes cash used for capital expenditures during the period. Our management compensates for this limitation by providing information about our capital expenditures on the face of the statement of cash flows and under the caption “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and Annual Report on Form 10-K. Google has computed free cash flow using the same consistent method from quarter to quarter and year to year.

    Non-GAAP international revenues. We define non-GAAP international revenues as international revenues excluding the impact of foreign exchange rate movements and hedging activities. Non-GAAP international revenues are calculated by translating current quarter revenues using prior quarter and prior year exchange rates, as well as excluding any hedging gains realized in the current quarter. We consider non-GAAP international revenues as a useful metric as it facilitates management’s internal comparison to our historical performance.

    The accompanying tables have more details on the non-GAAP financial measures that are most directly comparable to GAAP financial measures and the related reconciliations between these financial measures.

    Image via Google

  • Zuckerberg Opens Up About Facebook Search

    Zuckerberg Opens Up About Facebook Search

    As you may know, Facebook greatly expanded its search offerings last month when it launched the ability to search posts. You can now search keywords and get back results from people and pages you’re connected to. It instantly made Facebook a lot more useful as a search tool because it gives you access to content that’s not getting indexed by Google. This is often content that’s particularly relevant based on your personal connections to its creators.

    Have you been using Facebook’s new search functionality? Let us know in the comments.

    For example, you can easily find your friends’ posts about soup to get some ideas for your next soup batch. If you have one friend in particular that you consider a soup whiz, you can easily find his or her soup posts.

    There’s a lot of speculation about where Facebook might be headed with search. Facebook released its Q4 and full year 2014 earnings on Wednesday. During the conference call that followed, CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked a little bit about the company’s search efforts.

    While Zuckerberg didn’t exactly drop any bombshells, he did offer his thoughts on the company’s search direction. From his prepared remarks (via SeekingAlpha’s transcript):

    Search at Facebook is another important effort that we expect to create a lot of value over the next few years. In this quarter, we launched updates to Facebook search to make it easier to find content and posts on mobile and desktop. We’re going to continue listening the feedback from our community and commit time to build really valuable products here. We’re optimistic about our ability to deliver value that only Facebook is able to provide.

    During the Q&A session, Zuckerberg was asked to talk more about Facebook’s approach to search. He said:

    So, our view on this is that there is a lot of unique content that people have shared in Facebook, a lot of personal content, recommendations from friends that you can get that you just wouldn’t be able to get through a traditional web search service or other app. And we’re on this multiyear voyage to basically index all the content and make it available to people and rank it well. We started off by launching graph search which I think included more than a trillion different connections in the first system.

    And the second round of the search progress that we just started rolling out at the end of last year was post search, which now has indexed more than I think a trillion posts, which I mean the sizes of these corpuses are bigger than anything in a traditional web search corpus that you would find. So it’s an interesting and fun challenge to make this work. We’re seeing that people immediately understand how they can use this and find content that they’ve seen in News Feed before or that they’ve posted with just a few keywords.

    And we’re excited about that, but there is a lot more to do. So we’re not really thinking about advertising in it yet on the scale that our community operates, a billion searches per day is actually not that big compared to what we think the opportunity here should be. And we’re just continuing to keep on working on it because there is just a lot of unique value that people should be able to get [from] their friends on Facebook search.

    Earlier this week, search marketing veteran Rand Fishkin shared his thoughts on the direction of Facebook search after predicting that the company will start to include web content in its search results this year (in a different way than it has done in the past with Bing).

    “With Bing, Facebook was simply showing external results (like a metasearch engine),” he said. “I think if they use their own crawlers to gather data and a system to serve it, there will be a more holistic, cohesive experience, likely biased/filtered by some of the things Facebook knows about the user(s) doing the searching.”

    On whether or not Facebook’s recent search improvements are having a significant impact on how people find information so far, and whether or not they will in the future, Fiskhin told us, “No, and I think in the next few years, the answer will continue to be mostly no (at least if we’re talking about websearch kinds of information vs. ‘where’s my friend’s party Friday night?’ or ‘What does so-and-so’s new boyfriend look like?’). But, long term, I think there’s a possibility. If their early efforts show promise and a direction, I think we can extrapolate from there. For now, I’m not sold.”

    Facebook has been releasing a lot of standalone apps. Among these are dedicated apps for messaging, for managing Pages, and for Groups. Would they launch a dedicated search app? Should they?

    “No and probably no,” Fishkin said. “I think Facebook’s castle is their social graph and the private postings of people to whom other people are connected. They should continue to release products and apps that help build that moat, but for right now, broad search doesn’t fit that world, IMO.”

    Regardless of whether or not people are actively using it as such, Facebook search gives users new ways of obtaining information. This must mean that businesses, who have suffered drastic declines in organic reach in the News Feed, have some new opportunities to get in front of those actually searching. Fishkin’s advice is as follows.

    “Do remarkable things that people on Facebook want to talk about and share,” Fishkin said. “And if that’s too much, at least make sure all your business details are as up-to-date and accurate as possible on Facebook, and that you’re sharing things your followers/fans on that network will actually care about (even if that’s only a few times a year). Just make sure you don’t make Facebook the center of your online promotional efforts – save that for your website and use Facebook to drive traffic to it. You should never build your castle in someone else’s walled garden.”

    Video was a focal point of much of Facebook’s earnings call. We shared some highlights on that subject over here.

    If Facebook search becomes as big as the company would like it to, that could be a very damaging thing for YouTube, as it currently rules video search. With more people opting to post videos directly to Facebook and watch them there, searching for videos could also become much more common on the social network.

    Do you expect Facebook to make a significant impact on how people find information? Let us know in the comments.

    Image via Facebook