Google has Google+Blog%29″>just released a bunch of search statistics surrounding last night’s Super Bowl, and the most interesting thing they report is that the actual game didn’t really dominate search. In fact, searches directly linked to the game itself failed to even crack the number two spot on the list of the night’s top searches.
During Super Bowl XLVI, the top trending searches were Madonna and the Halftime Show. Those were followed, in order, by the Patriots, Tom Brady, and the Giants. It appears that the Queen of Pop really did steal the show, despite an attempt by M.I.A. to overshadow it.
And just how were people searching? According to Google, more so on their mobile devices than ever before. Searches pertaining to Super Bowl commercials were performed only 25% of the time on a mobile device before the game. But during the game, 41% of ad searches came from mobiles.
Throughout most of the game, Tom Brady dominated the field of other players when it came to searches. But just about the time that Eli Manning completed that amazing pass to Mario Mannigham, he took the lead and never looked back – both in the game and in search volume.
One interesting term that saw a huge spike in searches was “super bowl live stream,” which spiked right before kickoff on both desktop and mobile devices.
Check out Google’s infographic about Super Bowl searches both before and during the game:
Google rolled out “Search Plus Your World” in January, but that’s not the only change they made to how they deliver search results. Not even close.
If you’ve been following, you may know that Google has been putting out blog posts the last few months highlighting some of the various algorithm changes they’ve made (without giving away the secret sauce of course). Here’s our coverage of last month’s updates.
Here’s what Google now lists for January:
Fresher results. [launch codename “nftc”] We made several adjustments to the freshness algorithm that we released in November. These are minor updates to make sure we continue to give you the freshest, most relevant results.
Faster autocomplete. [launch codename “Snappy Suggest”, project codename “Suggest”] We made improvements to our autocomplete system to deliver your predicted queries much faster.
Autocomplete spelling corrections. [launch codename “Trivial”, project codename “Suggest”] This is an improvement to the spelling corrections used in autocomplete, making those corrections more consistent with the spelling corrections used in search. This launch targets corrections where the spelling change is very small.
Better spelling full-page replacement. [launch codenames “Oooni”, “sgap”, project codename “Full-Page Replacement”] When we’re confident in a spelling correction we automatically show results for the corrected query and let you know we’re “Showing results for [cheetah]” (rather than, say, “cheettah”). We made a couple of changes to improve the accuracy of this feature.
Better spelling corrections for rare queries. This change improves one of the models that we use to make spelling corrections. The result is more accurate spell corrections for a number of rare queries.
Improve detection of recurrent event pages. [launch codename “neseda”] We made several improvements to how we determine the date of a document. As a result, you’ll see fresher, more timely results, particularly for pages discussing recurring events.
High-quality sites algorithm improvements. [launch codenames “PPtl” and “Stitch”, project codename “Panda”] In 2011, we launched the Panda algorithm change, targeted at finding more high-quality sites. We improved how Panda interacts with our indexing and ranking systems, making it more integrated into our pipelines. We also released a minor update to refresh the data for Panda.
Cross-language refinements. [launch codename Xiangfan] Previously, we only generated related searches based on the display language. With this change, we also attempt to auto-detect the language of the original query to generate related search queries. Now, a user typing a query in French might see French query refinements, even if her language is set to English.
English on Google Saudi Arabia. Users in Saudi Arabia can now more easily choose an English interface to search on google.com.sa.
Improved scrolling for Image Search. Previously when you scrolled in Image Search, only the image results would move while the top and side menus were pinned in place. We changed the scrolling behavior to make it consistent with our main search results and the other search modes, where scrolling moves the entire page.
Improved image search quality. [launch codename “endearo”, project codename “Image Search”] This is a small improvement to our image search ranking algorithm. In particular, this change helps images with high-quality landing pages rank higher in our image search results.
More relevant related searches. Sometimes at the bottom of the screen you’ll see a section called “Searches related to” with other queries you may want to try. With this change, we’ve updated the model for generating related searches, resulting in more useful query refinements.
Blending of news results. [launch codename “final-destination”, project codename “Universal Search”] We improved our algorithm that decides which queries should show news results, making it more responsive to realtime trends. We also made an adjustment to how we blend news results in Universal Search. Both of these changes help news articles appear in your search results when they are relevant.
Automatically disable Google Instant based on computer speed. [project codename “Psychic Search”] Google Instant has long had the ability to automatically turn itself off if you’re on a slow internet connection. Now Instant can also turn itself off if your computer is slow. If Instant gets automatically disabled, we continue to check your computer speed and will re-enable Instant if your performance improves. We’ve also tweaked search preferencesso you can always have Instant on or off, or have it change automatically.
I thought it seemed like Google was placing a great deal of emphasis on recency. Now, we find out that they’ve made adjustments to the freshness update to make them even fresher and “more relevant”. I’m not sure that “more relevant” part is always working, however. Sometimes the freshest result isn’t the most relevant, and sometimes I think Google is showing results that would be better with less emphasis on freshness.
The “final-destination” update, which deals with how Google blends news results into the mix is worth noting as well. The fact that this is based around “realtime trends” seems to be another area where Google attempting to fill the void of realtime search.
Don’t expect Google to get Twitter-based realtime search back anytime soon. The two companies apparently won’t even talk to each other.
Bing Webmaster Tools has a new tool called the Markup Validation Tool, which can be found under the “crawl” tab
“This tool is a great way to understand if the added code is actually going to be readable, as intended,” says Bing’s Duane Forrester. “While the markup code being inaccurate will not cause your page to render any differently in most cases, having the syntax incorrect can affect our ability to use the data as you intend. Now you can easily check URLs for valid markup code from inside your webmaster tools account.”
The tool scans: HTML Microdata, Microformats, RDFa, Schema.org, and Open Graph markups, and displays them when properly implemented. When the user enters a URL, it will scan it and show the data it finds.
If a page is scanned, and doesn’t have any markup installed, or if it’s not installed right, the user will get an error message.
“If you are experiencing errors when using the tool to check your markup installation, please reference the links provided above to ensure you are using the code as intended within the parameters specified for each language,” says Forrester.
It goes without saying that Pizza Hut will sell a lot of pizza over Super Bowl weekend. To illustrate this, however, the popular pizza chain has put out the following infographic making some interesting comparisons. They posted it to their Facebook page.
Pizza Hut says: “If 2 million pizza were hours of YouTube content, there would be 228 years of viewing pleasure. If pizzas were search queries, Google would serve up the entire day’s worth of pizza in just 2.8 seconds. If we gave 1 pizza to every new Twitter user, we would run out in just 4 days. Facebook status updates every 2.8 seconds = 2 million.”
Update: A Google spokesperson tells WebProNews: “Like you wrote up in your article, it’s not new. Search plus Your World builds upon existing search features such as Social Search, personalized search, and authorship. You will continue to see existing Social Search features including +1s and content shared by your connections on Google+ and other sites. We’ll continue to look at your Google+ profile to see other content you’ve published online and linked to your profile.”
He shows a screen cap to back up his claim. It’s not the People and Places box or anything, but it does appear to show a social search result from Twitter, very similar to the recent injection of personalized Google+ connection results.
I’m not sure this is the result of any new offering from Google. They’ve had such social search features long before SPYW. See the “Social Connections and Content” section of your Google dashboard. This is basically the same connections you have listed on your Google Profile. So if you have your Twitter account connected, Google has that information, and can deliver you such results.
It’s not exactly the same as having access to the Firehose, which would blast all tweets into Google’s index in real time.
That said, SPYW has pretty much dominated those personalized search results with Google+ connections since it was announced, though Google made it clear, that it does in fact draw from other open web sources.
Still, Twitter raised a big stink about the whole thing, claiming Google was making Twitter results less visible. Many criticized the lack of non-Google sources in the People and Pages box in particular.
There have been reports of the relationship between Google and Twitter souring. Apparently the companies were supposed to have an Android-related conversation at the Consumer Electronics Show last month, but that didn’t happen, as Google’s SPYW raised the aforementioned stink.
It’s really not clear if this finding from Lurie is the result of any new developments. My guess is not. We’ve reached out to Google for comment, and will update accordingly.
Either way, it does show that Google will still show personalized Twitter results in some cases. That said, given Google’s increased emphasis on freshness, that firehose would be a lot more helpful.
Google today listed changes it made to its algorithm in January. As previously discussed, the biggest takeaway from that (at least in my opinion) was an increased focus on freshness through not only updates to the “Freshness Update,” but also through changes to universal search, which focus on the queries that deliver news results.
The company also addressed a recent Panda tweak:
High-quality sites algorithm improvements. [launch codenames “PPtl” and “Stitch”, project codename “Panda”] In 2011, we launched the Panda algorithm change, targeted at finding more high-quality sites. We improved how Panda interacts with our indexing and ranking systems, making it more integrated into our pipelines. We also released a minor update to refresh the data for Panda.
Google actually confirmed that this happened last week. Google reportedly said that there were no additional signals or actual changes to the algorithm, which would explain why there wasn’t a whole lot of fuss made about it, compared to Panda updates of the past.
Of course, there has been much more fuss about Google’s introduction of Search Plus Your World last month, which many have complained about with regards to its impact on Google search results relevancy.
Followers of the Panda saga may find this somewhat ironic, given that Google has spent nearly an entire year releasing Panda updates with the goal of improving search quality. Obviously this is not a goal Google is publicly backing away from, but some are questioning whether they’re placing a little more priority on making Google+ successful.
It’s well known within the Internet industry that Bing has special access to Facebook and Twitter that Google doesn’t. They pay for such access. Google thinks it can do better by putting Google+ content all over its results with Search Plus Your World. Not everyone is a fan of this.
Liz Gannes at All Things D ran an interview with Bing Director Stefan Weitz today, and pressed him about why Bing isn’t taking more advantage of the uproar around Google’s SPYW, given that it has the Twitter and Facebook access that Google doesn’t. They talk about more than that, but here are the relevant things that Weitz said to that part of the converstaion:
We are doing some ads this week [There was also a Bing-is-great blog post today]. They [Google] are doing a nice job on their own of handling this problem.
But they are learning just like we are. They did what we didn’t want to do, which was make the user experience peppered with this stuff, with +1s everywhere, the Google+ content in the top corner. I think [Google] realized we were ahead and they overextended. But I know a ton of guys there and they’re smart and they’re reacting what has been said.
…
You’re going to see the culmination of a lot of our learnings in the not too distant future. All those lessons will be applied into something that I think is pretty interesting. How we think about social is always evolving, and the next turn of the crank is more differentiated than we’ve seen in the past.
At least now we know what that Bing’s Favorite Bing features post was about. I have to admit, I’m curious about this “something interesting”.
A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that when we visited Bing.com, Bing wanted to give us a tour of what Bing’s homepage. It was very helpful of Bing to show us that they have old Bing homepage images available for viewing, mouseover facts about Bing homepage images, and trending topics that are quite visible at the bottom of the page.
“This week we have been encouraging people to take another look at Bing,” says the Bing Team. “To help folks who may not have used us in a while find some of our favorite features, we’ve pulled together a quick list of some cool things you can do on Bing that you won’t find other places.”
This should be helpful for all of those non-Bing enthusiasts who follow Bing’s blog. Bing’s “favorite features” are:
Bing’s homepage
Bing Travel’s price predictor
Bing Video’s “smart motion preview”
Bing Music’s artist pages
Bing Events’ “FanSnap”
Bing Local’s Action Buttons
Bing Maps’ Mall Maps
Bing Shopping’s Deals
Bing Maps’ Airport Maps
Bing’s presence on Xbox, mobile and iPad.
Bing’s share of the search market has managed to see continued growth in the U.S. Last month, comScore reported that its share was at 15.1% in December (compared to Google’s 66%). Yahoo’s share was down to 14.5%.
The Yahoo search blog has just released a trove of search stats regarding all things Super Bowl, and it’s clear that if the Super Bowl could be decided by search volume the New England Patriots would have this thing in the bag.
Yahoo says that the Patriots had 50% more searches this year than the NY Giants. Another metric listed the Pats as the winners of the Mobile Super Bowl, saying that Patriots fans were the most mobile savvy of the two fansets. Unfortunately, these interweb victories for the Patriots probably won’t have any bearing on what happens on the gridiron. But it’s interesting to note that folks have been more curious about the Patriots throughout the entire 2011-2012 season.
When it boils down to specific Quarterbacks, it’s all about recency. Over the course of the season, Tom Brady received double the searches of Eli Manning (probably UGG related). If you just look at the regular season, Brady garnered four times the searches that Eli did. But during the playoffs, Eli Manning has bested Brady in search volume. Eli’s search surge seems to parallel the surging Giants, who only seem to get better as they progress deeper into the season.
People are not just concerned about Brady and Manning’s football lives, but their personal lives as well. The search term “Tom Brady baby” is up 1,109% while the term “Eli Manning girlfriend” is up 1,201%.
When it comes to the coaches, Bill Belichick has received five times the searches of Tom Coughlin.
Yahoo also tracked some of the Super Bowl party-related queries. Here are the most searched dips this month:
Buffalo Chicken dip
Spinach dip
7 Layer Mexican dip
Spinach Artichoke dip
Crab dip
Taco dip
Guacamole dip
Chicken Wing dip (huh?)
Cheese Dip
Shrimp dip
The term “Super bowl recipes” is up 210%, with 70% of them coming from women. The top three recipes searches are “chicken recipes,” “crockpot recipes,” and meatloaf recipes.”
About that other part of the Super Bowl that we all love, the one that’s not the actual game or the food – Matthew Broderick’s Ferris Bueller-themed Honda ad has been the top searched Super bowl commercial this year.
Will you we watching the game? Who’s gonna take home the Lombardi? Let us know in the comments.
Google posted to its Public Policy blog this morning to emphasize the point that they are changing their privacy policies, not their privacy controls, and to share a letter the company wrote to members of congress.
Specific members include: Cliff Steams, Joe Barton, Marsha Blackburn, G.K. Butterfield, Henry Waxman, Edward Markey, Diana DeGette and Jackie Spier.
In the blog post, Google reminds people of five points:
We’re still keeping your private information private — we’re not changing the visibility of any information you have stored with Google.
We’re still allowing you to do searches, watch videos on YouTube, get driving directions on Google Maps, and perform other tasks without signing into a Google Account.
We’re still offering you choice and control through privacy tools like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager that help you understand and manage your data.
We still won’t sell your personal information to advertisers.
We’re still offering data liberation if you’d prefer to close your Google Account and take your data elsewhere.
There are some more specifics about the control Google offers users in the letter.
In the letter, Google notes that the old policies have restricted the company’s ability to combine info within an account for web history (search history for signed in users) and YouTube. “For example, if a user is signed in and searching Google for cooking recipes, our current privacy policies wouldn’t let us recommend cooking videos when she visits YouTube based on her searches – even though she was signed into the same Google Account when using both Google Search and YouTube,” Google says in the letter.
Below is the full text of the letter:
Dear Members of Congress:
Thank you for your letter of January 26, 2012 about Google’s plans to update our privacy policies by consolidating them into one document that is publicly available on our site at www.google.com/policies/privacy/preview.
We’re pleased to answer your questions, and we welcome the opportunity to correct some of the misconceptions that have been circulated about our updated privacy policy.
Some have expressed concern about whether consumers can opt out of our updated privacy policy. We understand the question at the heart of this concern. We believe that the relevant issue is whether users have choices about how their data is collected and used. Google’s privacy policy – like that of other companies – is a document that applies to all consumers using our products and services. However, we have built meaningful privacy controls into our products, and we are committed to continue offering those choices in the future.
There are several other key points that we appreciate the chance to clarify:
Our approach to privacy has not changed. We’ll continue to focus on providing transparency, control, and security to our users. In fact, the announcement of changes to our privacy policy is a great example of our effort to lead the industry in transparency. It’s been the most extensive user notification effort in Google’s history – including promotions on our homepage, emails to our users, just-in-time notifications, and more – to ensure that our users have many opportunities to learn about these changes.
Google users continue to have choice and control. The main change in the updated privacy policy is for users signed into Google Accounts. Individuals don’t need to sign in to use many of our services including Search, Maps, and YouTube. If a user is signed in, she can still edit or turn off her search history, switch Gmail chat to ―off the record,‖ control the way Google tailors ads to her interests using our Ads Preferences Manager, use Incognito mode on Chrome, or use any of the other privacy tools we offer. These privacy tools are listed at www.google.com/privacy/tools.
The privacy policy changes don’t affect our users’ existing privacy settings. If a user has already used our privacy tools to opt out of personalized search or ads, for example, she will remain opted out.
Our users’ private information remains private. The updated privacy policy does not change the visibility of any information a user has stored with Google. The update is about making our services more useful for that individual user, not about making information visible to third parties.
We’re not collecting any new or additional data about users. Our updated privacy policy simply makes it clear that we use data to refine and improve our users’ experiences on Google – whichever services they use. This is something we have already done for a long time for many of our products.
We are not selling our users’ data. We do not sell users’ personally identifiable information, and that will not change under the updated privacy policy.
Our users can use as much or as little of Google as they want. For example, a user might have a Google Account and choose to use Gmail, but not use Google+. Or she could keep her data separated with different accounts – for example, one for YouTube and another for Gmail.
We will continue to offer our data liberation tools. Our users will continue to have the ability to take their information elsewhere quickly and simply (more information about data liberation is available at www.dataliberation.org).
There are two reasons why we’re updating our privacy policies: to make them simpler and more
understandable, and to improve the user experience across Google.
The first reason is simplicity. Google started out in 1998 as a search engine, but since then, like other technology companies, we’ve added a whole range of different services. Gmail, Google Maps, Google Apps, Blogger, Chrome, Android, YouTube, and Google+ are just a few of our many services now used by millions of people around the world.
Historically when we launched (or acquired) a new service, we added a new privacy policy, or left the existing one for that service in place. This approach eventually created a wide range of policies.
In September 2010, we took a first step toward simplifying these policies by folding a dozen service-specific notices into our main Privacy Policy. But that still left more than 70 notices. So last week we announced that we’ve re written our main Google Privacy Policy to make it much more readable, while incorporating most of our existing service specific privacy notices. This now gives users one comprehensive document that outlines our privacy commitments across our services.
Regulators globally have been calling for shorter, simpler privacy policies, and we’ve received good feedback from several agencies since last week’s announcement. For example, Ann Cavoukian, the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario, Canada, who is credited with the concept of ―Privacy by Design,‖ recently said about our new Privacy Policy, ―By pulling it all together into one central location and simplifying it, it makes it much more accessible and user friendly. So I think this is a positive development.
The second reason is to create a better user experience. Generally speaking, the main Google Privacy Policy applies across Google, allowing data to be used generally to improve our services, unless it is limited by a specific restriction in the privacy notice for a particular service. Most of our privacy policies have traditionally allowed us to combine information gathered in connection with one service with information from other services when users are signed into their Google Accounts. By combining information within a user’s account we can improve their experience across Google.
For example, today we make it easy for a signed-in user to immediately add an appointment to her Calendar when a message in Gmail looks like it’s about a meeting. As a signed-in user she can also read a Google Docs document right in her Gmail, rather than having to leave Gmail to read the document. Our ability to share information for one account across services also allows signed-in users to use Google+’s sharing feature – called ―circles‖ – to send directions to family and friends without leaving Google Maps. And a signed-in user can use her Gmail address book to auto-complete an email address when she’s inviting someone to work on a Google Docs document. These are just a few examples of how we make our users’ experience seamless and easy by allowing information sharing among services when users are signed into their Google Accounts.
However, our privacy policies have restricted our ability to combine information within an account for two services: Web History, which is search history for signed-in users, and YouTube, the video-sharing service we acquired in 2007. (We had not updated YouTube’s original privacy policy to include Google, with the result that Google could share information with YouTube, but not vice versa.) For example, if a user is signed in and searching Google for cooking recipes, our current privacy policies wouldn’t let us recommend cooking videos when she visits YouTube based on her searches – even though she was signed into the same Google Account when using both Google Search and YouTube.
This kind of simple, intuitive experience across Google benefits our signed-in users by making things easier and letting them find useful information more quickly. Indeed, we often get suggestions from users about how to better integrate our services so that they work together more seamlessly. So our updated privacy policy makes it clear in one comprehensive document that, if a user is signed in, we may combine information she has provided from one service with information from our other services. We’ll treat that user as a single entity across all our services, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.
We hope this overview of our updated privacy policy, together with our attached answers to your specific questions, will address your concerns. However, if you would like to discuss this further, please let us know.
Sincerely,
Pablo Chavez
Director of Public Policy
Google Inc.
Russia’s most popular search engine, Yandex, announced today that it has purchased a license for digital maps from NAVTEQ, which will be used in the development of a “detailed world map” for Yandex.Maps.
Yandex is using maps from NAVTEQ from around the world, including in Europe, North America, Australia and developed countries in Asia. The maps include roadways, traffic networks and buildings.
Maria Orlova, head of production and quality control on the Yandex.Maps service, says, “Our users have already appreciated high-quality detailed maps of Russia and Ukraine with the search function and other useful features such as routing, traffic information, satellite images and panoramic views. We continue to enhance our map services for Belarus and Kazakhstan.”
Yandex has actually already been using NAVTEQ maps for Turkey at yandex.com.tr. The company also partners with other map providers to license content for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. In 2010, the company purchased GIS Technologies for city maps.
“NAVTEQ’s content will help us make Yandex.Maps a comprehensive, all-purpose mapping service that can answer users’ questions about countries throughout the world,” she adds.
Yandex says it will gradually add content to both its desktop version and mobile app to support all major platforms.
There’s an API available for sites to utilize, and embed maps.
One or more people are going around impersonating Google’s head of web spam (and now “Distinguished Engineer”) Matt Cutts, leaving comments on various articles on the web. It’s been going on for a while.
Usually, if you pay close enough attention, you can spot the fakes, but sometimes they can be deceiving.
We’ve had a fake Matt Cutts leaving a bunch of comments here on WebProNews lately. We delete them as we spot them, but sometimes they still surface, so beware of what you’re reading. Of course, the impostor(s) hasn’t been sticking to WebProNews only. Here are a couple of tweets from Cutts the other day:
@mattcutts Matt Cutts@sarahcuda no worries–thanks for taking care of it. “Pretending to be Matt Cutts” would be a boring/lame game; surprised anyone plays it 🙂2 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto
Lame indeed. With all due respect to Cutts. Pretending to be others and spreading misinformation is lame. Period. So, fake Matt Cutts, please leave us alone. Real Matt Cutts, feel free to chime in any time. Readers, just beware that the comments you read may or may not be real. We’ll continue to police them the best we can.
If you are a regular follower of what the real Cutts says, and what he is saying in a comment sounds like something he wouldn’t say, there’s a good chance it’s not him who said it. If you’re ever unsure, and you care enough to make a decision based on what was or wasn’t said, Cutts has said in the past that he will verify via Twitter whether it was him that said it. So keep that in mind.
Update: With the Searchmetrics list, we encouraged you to take it with a grain of salt, but Matt Cutts said the following about it in a Tweet, implying that it’s fairly flawed:
Original Article: Back in November, Google revealed that it was testing algorithm changes that would examine what appears “above the fold” on web pages. It raised a number of questions about the kinds of hoops webmasters would have to jump through.
Last week, the changes were officially announced as the “Page Layout” update, which looks at the layout of a page and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result.
Upon announcing the update, Google “Distinguished Engineer” Matt Cutts wrote:
Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.
We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.
Following the announcement of the Page Layout update, Matt Cutts hosted a Google+ Hangout where he clarified it a bit. As my colleague Chris Richardson recently reported:
“It’s not a numbers game. Google hasn’t written their algorithm to punish sites with, say, 20 ads above the fold, as opposed to the site owner who only has 19 showing. No, from the Cutts/Google perspective, the algorithm alteration inspects pages to see how the space, especially above the fold, is being used.
In fact, Google isn’t concerned about the number of ads at all. Instead, they just don’t want these ads — however many are appearing above the fold — taking up too much space.
In the hangout, Cutts demonstrated with two yellow stickies on the top of a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, indicating that even if this space was just one big ad it is too much and could be impacted by the algorithm change.
Cutts said, following the hangout, “I’ll try to review it to make sure I didn’t say anything too wrong. If things look good, we might be able to post the recording.” So, you may get to watch that in the near future.
One of Google’s “questions that one could use to assess the ‘quality of a page or an article,” for example, was: “Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?”
So, excessive or big ads at the top, may still get you in search visibility hot water. And speaking of that, SearchMetrics, which within the industry is well-known for providing data on losers and winners (in terms of search visibility) from the Panda update and other Google updates, has provided us with a top losers list from the page layout algorithm change. Here’s that list:
Some interesting names on that list, no? Facebook. Twitter. Yahoo. Amazon. MySpace. LinkedIn. YouTube. Aol. Sprinkle in the porn sites on the list, and it’s quite an interesting mix. I don’t associate sites like Twitter or Facebook with having too much non-content above the fold, so it’s very interesting that such sites would appear on the list.
Granted, this is just the analysis of one firm, so take it with a grain of salt. For that matter, Google makes algorithm tweaks every day, so it’s also possible sites were impacted by other changes.
Twitter and Facebook are particularly interesting entries, considering Google’s “Search Plus Your World” which gives greater prominence to Google+ content. Twitter, of course, was complaining about Twitter results not ranking better.
Notice that EzineArticlces – a past victim of Panda, which still to this day has quite a few ads above the fold, isn’t on the list. Here’s a look at the top of one of their article pages.
There are 11 ads (Google ads, actually) that are visible just on this part of the page. But the article isn’t too hard to find, so I guess it’s OK.
“If you take a look at the loser list, then you see some losers who used lots of Adsense. Interesting is that ezinearticles.com didn’t lose this time,” a SearchMetrics spokesperson tells WebProNews.
Are you surprised by any of the sites on the losers list? Has your site been impacted? Let us know in the comments.
It was around this time last year when Google’s search results really started attracting a whole lot of criticism (more than usual). The content farm discussion was going full-throttle, and finally in February, Google launched the Panda update, its attempt at increasing the quality of search results.
Whether or not this actually worked has been widely debated.
It’s almost like the whole thing has started over this year, but not because of content farms so much. Now, everyone’s complaining about Search Plus Your World, for one. They’re saying the heavy Google+ integration is making their results less relevant. OK, maybe not everyone, but a lof of people are complaining.
I pointed out an example yesterday, where it seemed like Google’s recent freshness update was actually hurting the relevancy of search results.
Danny Sullivan is pointing to some questionable video results in Google, pointing out better results on Bing.
The reality is that often when we find poor quality results in Google, they’re not much better in Bing or Yahoo. However, recent Google updates may be changing that a bit – particularly Search Plus Your World. You’re not going to see Bing infused with tons of Google+ content.
For the record, I have found SPYW to both increase and decrease the relevancy of search results, depending on the query. Sometimes it makes more sense than others.
Regarding the video that Sullivan references, he says, “It’s embarrassing for Google to be doing this. And it’s worse when you look at the views the video has received: only about 2,000, at this point.”
He essentially goes on to make the case that even while the video in question isn’t coming from SPYW (my example wasn’t caused by SPYW either), it “feels like another bit of evidence that Google’s original core mission, delivering awesome search results, is being forgotten.”
I don’t know if it’s being forgotten. Google has hardly slowed down on the algorithm updates. But that doesn’t mean Google’s strategy isn’t having some negative side effects.
Remember that Twitter Google deal that the companies couldn’t get renewed? The one for real-time search, which made Google a lot better for real-time information? It doesn’t look like they’re going to come to an agreement anytime soon.
Google and Twitter are beefin’.
In case you haven’t been keeping up, Twitter spoke out against Google’s “Search Plus Your World” features, announced earlier this month, which give Google+ a lot more visibility in search results. More on that here.
Google responded, “We are a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer (http://goo.gl/chKwi), and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions.”
Sarah Lacy of PandoDaily has an interesting report about how Google and Twitter were supposed to meet about Twitter and Android (which could have been very interesting, considering Apple’s increased Twitter integration with iOS 5). Lacy reports:
A well-placed source tells us that Google’s Android team was supposed to meet with Twitter at CES about how to make Twitter work better on Android. Then, the Search Plus Your World controversy began. Eric Schmidt claimed that Google couldn’t index Twitter and Facebook properly because those companies don’t allow Twitter to access their data. Twitter openly refuted this: The reality is Google’s bots hit Twitter hundreds of millions of times per day, sending 1,500 queries per second. Google has those Tweets, whether Twitter likes it or not.
The Google brain trust was so irritated with Twitter’s statements that the Android meeting was abruptly called off, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. There’s still no sign of the meeting being rescheduled.
Clearly there is a great deal of bad blood between Google and Twitter, who called SPYW “bad for the Internet”.
This bad blood doesn’t bode well for the return of Twitter to Google’s realtime search, though Google has indicated it would relaunch the feature in the future with Google+ content (and content from other sources). Unfortunately (for Google users) Twitter is still the best way to get realtime information about just about anything. Fortunately for Twitter users, this info is still easily obtainable with a simple Twitter search.
The whole Android thing is interesting though. Lacy suggests that this could have a negative impact on Android’s user experience, benefiting the iPhone. I doubt we will see Twitter going to far as to pull their Android app for the market or anything. Even if they did, there would be plenty of third-party apps to step up to the plate.
In 2010, a group of travel sites banded together to form the FairSearch Coalition, with the main goal of seeing Google’s acquisition of ITA Software blocked. It didn’t work, but the coalition is still going strong, fighting to see antitrust action taken against Google.
The coalition, made up of Google competitors, including main competitor Microsoft, is expanding more beyond travel sites now. The coalition announced today that it has added not only new members in travel, but also members in e-commerce and advertising.
New members include: PPC ad company adMarketplace, online travel industry trade group the Interactive Travel Services Association (ITSA), online shopping site Twenga and marketing firm ShopCity.com.
For most of its existence, ShopCity’s growth has been thwarted by unjustified Google penalties and anticompetitive Google prefacing. These matters were realized in writing with the Commission staff months ago, but the staff has not followed up in any respect.
“When a company begins competing directly with Google, in a market where they are not yet the dominant player, Google will make it very difficult to succeed,” says ShopCity CEO Colin Pape today. “In the process, Google harms consumers by steering them away from relevant results, solely for Google’s own financial benefit.”
“We believe that Google uses its monopoly power to distort the marketplace by steering consumers away from the natural search results available for travel online,” says ITSA President Joseph Rubin. “Further, the online travel companies are required to provide various consumer disclosures with their listings. Our members think consumers deserve the protection of those disclosures that we provide, and that Google Flight Search in many cases does not.”
Twenga filed a complaint with the European Commission earlier this week, asking it to stop Google’s “anti-competitive business and search practices”. Twenga says these “undermine jobs and innovation in the European Union.”
Interestingly enough Google was in Brussels this week with members of the Commission talking about how businesses are growing, thanks to the Internet.
“By systematically ranking its own offerings over links to competitors, Google uses its dominant power to hurt other businesses rather than competing fairly in the marketplace,” says Bastien Duclaux, co-founder and CEO of Twenga. “Google’s abuse of its monopoly power in search threatens the ability of innovators everywhere to reach consumers on the Internet. Google has created the conditions for an uneven playing field in which it is predetermined to always emerge as the winner.”
adMarketplace CEO James Hill says, “As media industry veterans, we have built a compelling search advertising network. Every day, our client teams hear from potential customers and publishers that Google makes it difficult for them to work with other advertising networks. A level playing field is critical to a competitive online advertising marketplace – and that does not exist today because of Google’s practices.”
You can see a recent interview we did with FairSearch here, as well well as an interview TechFreedom, arguing against the merits of the coalition’s agenda.
While researching an article I wrote this morning about Google’s privacy changes and their implications, I couldn’t help but notice a huge fail on Google’s part in terms of relevancy. It seemed worth sharing.
You would think a search for “google privacy” might deliver Google’s privacy policy as the top result – or at least something directly from the company about their new policy. Something official.
Nope.
Here’s what I got with “Search Plus Your World” turned enabled:
And here’s with SPYW turned off:
It’s not much better. Some have argued that SPYW has harmed Google’s search results in terms of relevancy. That may be the case in some instances, but it doesn’t appear to have been much of a factor this time. It looks like the “freshness update” can harm it too, as Google seems to be favoring recent media stories about its privacy changes more prominently than the privacy policy itself.
Or maybe they just think searchers are more interested in commentary about the changes, than seeing the official documents. That’s not what I was looking for in this case. Maybe it’s my faut. I could’ve added the word “policy” to the query.
Well, that’s only slightly better.
Google is not perfect. It acknowledges this, but you would think that when searching for something from Google itself, you would get that. Perhaps this is Google’s way of showing it doesn’t favor its own results.
Google announced this week that it is rolling out a new, main privacy policy that covers the majority of its products. The company is consolidating over 60 privacy notices into the main privacy policy. It’s keeping a few separate for “legal and other reasons”.
“Regulators globally have been calling for shorter, simpler privacy policies—and having one policy covering many different products is now fairly standard across the web,” Google says.
Google users have been receiving emails about the changes:
You know that whole “Google+ is Google.” mantra? Essentially what the new privacy policy means is that Google+ is in fact Google. It also means that Gmail is Google. YouTube is Google. Essentially, it affirms what we’ve been saying for quite some time. Google is the product, and all of Google’s services are basically features of that product – the way Facebook is the product, and the news feed, photos, videos, chat, etc. are features of that product.
In Google’s case, this concept embodies the majority of its products – the ones that aren’t being kept separate for “legal and other reasons”.
“The main change is for users with Google Accounts,” explains Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering at Google. “Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”
Whitten says Google’s “Search Plus Your World” (or SPYW) is a good example of what Google can do when its products are one. Not everyone agrees that that is a “good” example. In fact, the move has been highly controversial, as is the new approach to privacy.
“Today we can also do things like make it easy for you to read a memo from Google Docs right in your Gmail, or add someone from your Gmail contacts to a meeting in Google Calendar,” Whitten adds. “But there’s so much more that Google can do to help you by sharing more of your information with … well, you. We can make search better—figuring out what you really mean when you type in Apple, Jaguar or Pink.”
“We can provide more relevant ads too,” says Whitten. “For example, it’s January, but maybe you’re not a gym person, so fitness ads aren’t that useful to you. We can provide reminders that you’re going to be late for a meeting based on your location, your calendar and an understanding of what the traffic is like that day. Or ensure that our spelling suggestions, even for your friends’ names, are accurate because you’ve typed them before. People still have to do way too much heavy lifting, and we want to do a better job of helping them out.”
At best this will cause massive bad publicity at worst it could be the start of a slippery slope for Google. I think this one may even capture the general public’s attention.
Can’t opt out? People are going to bail out!
The question will be will gmail users opting in (to continue using the service)? How many are going to give up their established gmail accounts? I know many gmail users who do not use any other G products… and some with gmail that use bing for search. Will be interesting to see how this shakes out.
@jmathias james a mathiasre: Privacy; Google has been “tracking” us from day one. It just feels worse now because we use our real names online.7 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto
@ScottTShepherd Scott ShepherdAs an admitted #Google cheerleader, I just can’t get into a froth yet over privacy changes; assumed this was the direction all along.1 minute ago via web · powered by @socialditto
@TheRealSpaf Gene SpaffordGoogle dismisses criticism of its new privacy policy as “uninformed” & “overreaction”; also promote their new Google Android Endoscopy app.2 hours ago via Buffer · powered by @socialditto
The whole thing obviously bodes well for Google+ numbers. Google announced last week that Google+ has surpassed 90 million users. That’s a lot for the short time that’s been around, but it helps growth when it’s all tied to “the greater Google”. Sign up for a Google account now, and you’re signing up for Google+, Gmail, and nearly everything else.
That said, there are other forces at play for Google+ that could help that growth continue. It’s starting to break more into the mainstream. You have things like Anderson Cooper telling people to add him to their Circles. Remember when you first started to see TV shows tell people to follow them on Twitter? That helped Twitter immensely, no doubt. If more follow Cooper’s lead, that’s going to be huge for Google+. And with Google+‘s impact on search results, why wouldn’t more want to do this?
Google+” src=”http://cdn.ientry.com/sites/webpronews/pictures/ac360googleplus_616.jpg” title=”Anderson Cooper on Google+” class=”aligncenter” width=”616″ height=”406″ />
More celebrities are joining Google+ – another thing that helped Twitter gain steam. Lady Gaga, one of the biggest celebrities in pop culture, currently, just joined Google+ last week. Expect more and more to follow.
And of course, there’s good old fashioned advertising. Google, historically not a big television advertiser, is much more about some TV ads these days, including Google+ specific ads.
Competitive Strategy
We’ve written a number of times (including as recently as last week) about how much sense it would make for Facebook to get more into search to compete more directly with Google. Not just as a social network, but as a web company. It still makes sense, and perhaps even more so now that Google has made this new move with its privacy policy. What the policy has done has, for all intents and purposes, made Google one entity, rather than numerous products. One big fat rival to Facebook for users’ time spent online, user data and ultimately advertisers’ dollars spent trying to reach those users.
Why am I on about this? Because some weeks ago, Facebook told a bunch of advertisers and third parties (FM was one of them) that it was no longer OK to integrate Facebook actions into third party advertisements. This was always in their policies, but everyone was pretty much ignoring it – including most of the largest advertisers on the planet. After all, it’d be pretty hard to tell major television advertisers to stop asking viewers to “Like us on Facebook”. But for some reason, Facebook recently decided enough was enough online, and won’t let folks do exactly the same thing – with interactive functionality – online. You won’t be seeing ads on any site that integrate Facebook Likes, Shares, or other verbs, unless the advertisers paying for those ads have cut special deals with Facebook. (Or, of course, unless Facebook launches its own ad network…)
Makes you wonder about the potential of such a network. A Facebook version of AdSense. They certainly have the data, and Facebook is certainly all over the web. We’ve written on this before in the past .
Some have pointed out that Google’s strategy has kind of an Apple feel to it, in terms of having more control over what users do on its various products, and making sure that users have a “beautiful” experience, as Larry Page put it. This is quite interesting, considering the way Google has portrayed itself as almost the anti-Apple (particularly with Android) in terms of being more “open” – a philosophy that has been criticized a great deal by pundits.
But back to Facebook for a minute. There’s also the competition between these two companies at the talent level. Plenty of Googlers have jumped ship to Facebook. Others are finding other ways to go. We know SPYW isn’t sitting well with some former Googlers, and apparently it’s not with some current Googlers either, and according to a report from PandoDaily, Google CEO Larry Page has basically told those employees who have a problem with it to get out and not let the door hit them on the ass. According to one report, even Foursquare (who has in recent times expressed interest in working with Google) is poaching a fair amount of talent from the company.
Wrapping up
Google has taken some very interesting turns since Larry Page took over as CEO. Whether these turns are in the company’s (and users’) best interests in the long run remains to be seen. Either way, some of the choices Google has made have proven to be incredibly controversial both among users, and even with insiders. Many have expressed intentions of stopping their use of Google products. If too many decide to do this, it’s obviously going to be a problem. But how many Google users (and that’s users of any Google product) are really ready to stop using every single Google product? For some that’s going to be quite a change of lifestyle. There’s no question that those making complaints about Google’s businesses practices (as well as privacy watchdogs) are going to have a field day with this, whether Google is in the wrong or not.
If you work at Google, and you have a problem with Google’s “Search Plus Your World” features, you can find another place to work. Perhaps Facebook. That seems to be popular destination for former Googlers.
Google CEO Larry Page, according to a report from PandoDaily, told employees at a staff event:
“This is the path we’re headed down – a single unified, ‘beautiful’ product across everything. If you don’t get that, then you should probably work somewhere else.”
Apparently some of them are in fact looking to do just that. Sarah Lacy says she’s heard from several employees that they’re “embarrassed and unhappy”. She also points to this tweet from Chris Sacca, which says a lot:
@sacca Chris SaccaPast week, I’ve had three GOOG employees email me “seeking new opportunities”. Keep em coming. Believing in your work matters.1 day ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto
Google has a new way for sites that use Google Custom Search to add pages to the custom search engine’s index.
“Our users have been telling us that while they love the concept of on-demand indexing, manually entering URLs or keeping a Sitemap up to date is too cumbersome,” says Google software engineer Liqian Luo.
If the site is verified with Webmaster Tools, you can provide Google with a URL for your page that links to your site’s latest content, and Google will “periodically” visit it to discover the new content.
Luo writes in a post on Google’s Custom Search Blog at googlecustomsearch.blogspot.com, “For example, as the owners of this blog, we can provide the URL of the blog’s landing page, googlecustomsearch.blogspot.com, to our CSE. It will then periodically visit that URL and add any new links to content on this blog to our CSE’s index. Since this URL automatically links to all new content on this blog, our CSE’s index will always automatically get updated.”
The URL can be provided via the “URLs linked from a page” feature in the indexing page on your Custom Search Engine control panel.
As Luo points out, it only works for discovery of new content. Not refreshed content that has already been indexed.
