WebProNews

Tag: Search

  • Google Pubcon Q&A: 24 Takeaways

    Google Pubcon Q&A: 24 Takeaways

    At Pubcon in Las Vegas today, Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal, two key members of Google’s search team, took the stage to talk about Google search, and answer questions from webmasters.

    Here are 24 takeaways from what they said:

    1. Google is getting better at communicating with webmasters.

    2. Mobile and social are the future.

    3. Google is getting better at understanding more of the content that resides on a page – specifically how much content is above the fold.

    4. If you have too many ads (not specified as AdSense ads, mind you) that distract from the content, you may have problems.

    5. Better understanding of page factors that improve quality is a focus of Google.

    6. Layout of the page will matter even more in the future

    7. People using Google Voice and Siri still go to Google when those things fail

    8. Google might roll out some kind of replacement for the “+” operator which was recently changed (in favor of Google+ Direct Connect, as we now know).

    9. Google might start communicating with webmasters about certain software being out of date the way they do with WordPress.

    10. Google wants to be more transparent about algorithm updates, and will announce them as they go (we’ve already seen this with the Panda and Freshness updates).

    11. Google suggests telling Google when you publish content using email alerts and set up pubsubhubbub in Webmaster Tools to help them better see that you publish the content before scrapers scrape it.

    12. Doorway pages are a bad idea

    13. High quality content is something you can send to a child and they can learn something from

    14. Google says Panda has been a positive change across all of its known measurements, but they acknowledge that no algorithm is perfect, and encourage webmasters to report issues.

    15. Google has an excel sheet of 500 sites from a thread in Google Webmaster Help Forum (presumably the one discussed here).

    16. There is a person responsible for false positives.

    17. Google says that while they don’t care about brands, per se, there is something about brands that users associate with relevance.

    18. Google has spam fighters in 40 languages.

    19. Google says you should expect search to become more personal in the coming months.

    20. Google will not back off on SSL, but might move forward on it.

    21. Links obtained by using press releases are only helpful when people pick them up and create their own stories from them.

    22. As Google focus on quality, who wrote it (authorship) and who their friends are (social) are main focuses.

    23. Google tries to remove parts of sites that are spamming. Sometimes action is taken on the entire site. Google says it reserves the right to cut parts of sites.

    24 .When asked about Google not tracking keywords in analytics, and why they’re not providing more detailed query data in Webmaster Tools due to the SSL feature, Google says you can get the top 1,000 queries and 96% of sites get all queries . To give it to the other 4%, would increase their data storage by 4 times. They are looking to upgrade it via download or APIs.

    Here’s some Twitter reaction to the session:

    @tonynwright
    Tony N. Wright    I believe @mattcutts would make a great politician. He has the ability to sound good without providing useful input. #pubcon #googlesslscam 11 minutes ago via HootSuite · powered by @socialditto

    @joeyabna
    Joey Abna    awesome Q&A time in the #pubcon keynote with @mattcutts and amit. Plenty of good stuff and laugh out loud moments. #winning 11 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @adeletiblier
    Adele Tiblier    The Google groupies are crashing the stage for any millisecond they can get with @mattcutts #pubcon http://t.co/iNaXjIgi 18 minutes ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

    I can definitely attest to the fact that Cutts is like a rock star at these events. I remember at Google I/O last year, he could hardly walk down the hall without people swarming him as if waiting for an autograph (the autograph in this case being site advice). Like only the coolest rock star, however, he would actually take the time to sit down with people and help them.

    Here’s coverage of a webmaster video Cutts tweeted out, about page speed.

    Hat tip to Search Engine Roundtable for providing live notes of the Q&A.

  • Google: Page Speed Affects Rankings In 1 Out Of 100 Searches

    With PubCon going on, Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted out a link to what he calls “a special webmaster video for #pubcon”. It’s about how Google determines page speed.

    Specifically, it’s Matt’s response to a user question:

    “How does Google determine page speed? In GWT some pages are listed as very slow (8+ seconds). But I have tested on older computers/browsers and they do not take anywhere near that long to load. Why might Google show such high numbers?”

    “The fact is we’re looking at using toolbar data, and that’s using toolbar data only from people who have opted in. But that’s looking at real world load times from people for example, in the United States, we might say, how long does it take to load this particular page?” says Cutts. “And so if we’re looking at that, and it takes a long time, sometimes it’s not necessarily your site. It could be the network connectivity. But it’s a good thing to bear in mind.”

    “It’s coming from all these different users, who can have dial-up lines,” he says. “They can have slow connections. And so a lot of times, people say, I’m just going to throw a 500 kilobyte page out there, and they forget there are a lot of people with slower connectivity. So that data is based primarily on toolbar data.”

    “And we’re looking at what it looks like for real users,” he continues. “And do if you’ve got a lot of users who are having a slow experience, then that can affect the overall rating. One thing to bear in mind, however, is that only something like one out of 100 searches is site speed such a factor that it would actually change the rankings to a noticeable degree.”

    “So that’s something on the order of one in 1,000 sites have truly site speed as a really big issue for them,” he says. “It’s always good to see if you can move a little bit faster and try to return results to users a little bit faster. It makes your website experience more fluid. It makes your users happier. There are studies that say the return on investment is definitely worth it. But at the same time, I wouldn’t stress overly about it.”

    Cutts is speaking at PubCon tomorrow morning with Google Fellow Amit Singhal in a session called “Hot Google Topics & Trends.” It should be interesting to see what these two Google search guys have to say.

    Cutts also tweeted out a picture of gummy pandas:

    @mattcutts
    Matt Cutts    Pandas made out of acai? This might be the official #pubcon snack. http://t.co/UbkaJPj6 15 hours ago via Twitter for Android · powered by @socialditto

    Note: The image at the top is from Matt’s personal blog, chronicling his moustache adventures for Movember. That’s from last week. Daune Forrester (Bing’s counterpart to Matt Cutts) told me at BlogWorld his moustache isn’t coming along so well. I believe he likened himself to a Spanish cop.

  • Google “Freshness” Update Helps A Bunch of News Sites

    A few days ago, Google confirmed that it launched a new algorithm update with freshness in mind. The update is built “upon the momentum” of Caffeine, the infrastructure update Google completed last year, designed to index fresher content more quickly.

    This new update, the company says, impacts roughly 35% of searches. It’s designed to show more high quality pages that are only minutes old for queries related to recent events or hot topics.

    Without specifying with keywords that you want the most recent event in a series of recurring events, you’re supposed to see the fresh ones – whether that be sports scores, earnings reports, TV shows, or other events.

    You should also notice a difference in getting more frequently updated info on things where info changes frequently, even when it’s not a hot topic or recurring event. Google uses the examples of “best sir cameras” or ‘subaru impreza reviews”. Google tries to give you the latest info when it thinks it’s relevant.

    There have been plenty of interesting reactions to this update from the SEO community – some skeptical, some hopeful. We looked at a few in a recent article.

    SearchMetrics, which has provided data about the winners and losers of search visibility resulting from various iterations of Google’s Panda update, has released a list of top winners and losers from this “freshness” update.

    Interestingly, both lists include plenty of big brands.

    Here’s the winner list:

    Google freshness update winners

    Here are the losers:

    Google Freshness losers

    As SearchMetrics founder Marcus Tober points out, the winners list shows a lot of news sites, while the losers list consists of a wide variety of types of sites with no real clear category of site sticking out.

  • Google+ Just Got More Critical to Search

    It’s been clear from the beginning that Google+ would play a major role in search, and as time has gone on, we’ve seen various glimpses of this, whether it be the +1 buttons, Google connecting authors to their Google Profiles, or adding Circle counts and Google+ comments to search results.

    Today, Google announced the launch of Pages for businesses, brands and products. More on this here.

    Along with these pages comes the ability for people to add your page to their Circles from search results. They can do this one of two ways: adding from the search result, or by using Google+ Direct Connect, which lets you enter a “+” with the Page you’re looking for as the query:

    Along with Pages, Google is also launching badges and icons that sites can add, to connect their site to their Page. These will be available in the coming days. People can add your page to their Circles right from your site.

    This is all bound to be very helpful for brands, and we all know that social signals are a considerable part of what Google is looking at these days.

    But perhaps even more significant yet, is this next part. Google+ Pages Product Management Director Dennis Troper writes on the Inside AdSense blog:

    You can also link your site to your Google+ page so that all your +1s — from your Page, your website, and search results — will get tallied together and appear as a single total. Potential visitors will be more likely to see the recommendations your site has received, whether they’re looking at a search result, your website, or your Page, meaning your +1’s will reach not only the 40 million users of Google+, but all the people who come to Google every day. You can link your site to your Page either using the Google+ badge or with a piece of code. To set this up, visit our Google+ badge configuration tool.

    So, this should help your site get associated with more +1’s altogether, and Google has been very clear about this being used as a ranking factor from day one.

  • Google+ Pages for Businesses Now a Reality

    Google announced today that it is finally rolling out Google+ Pages for businesses, brands and products. That’s worldwide.

    It’s not quite yet available for everyone, but will be “soon” according to Google. Here’s the URL where you can go to create one when: https://plus.google.com/pages/create.

    “For you and me, this means we can now hang out live with the local bike shop, or discuss our wardrobe with a favorite clothing line, or follow a band on tour,” says Google SVP of Engineering Vic Gundotra. “Google+ pages give life to everything we find in the real world. And by adding them to circles, we can create lasting bonds with the pages (and people) that matter most.”

    “For businesses and brands, Google+ pages help you connect with the customers and fans who love you,” he adds. “Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face. All you need to do is start sharing, and you’ll soon find the super fans and loyal customers that want to say hello.”

    There are a number of Pages that are already available for viewing For example, here’s one for the Dallas Cowboys.

    <a href=Google+ Pages” src=”http://cdn.ientry.com/sites/webpronews/article_pics/dallas-cowboys-gplus.jpg” title=”Google+ Pages” class=”aligncenter” width=”616″ height=”546″ />

    Of course there’s a search benefit to having a page. Users who find your page in search results, will be able to add it to their circles right from the search results page.

    Google also announced “Google+ Direct, which lets you automatically add Google+ pages to your circles from Google Search by adding “+” in front of the page you’re searching for. That explains why they got rid of the “+” operator.

    “Maybe you’re watching a movie trailer, or you just heard that your favorite band is coming to town,” says Gundotra. “In both cases you want to connect with them right now, and Direct Connect makes it easy—even automatic. Just go to Google and search for [+], followed by the page you’re interested in (like +Angry Birds). We’ll take you to their Google+ page, and if you want, we’ll add them to your circles.”

    Google says that while Direct Connect only works with select pages right now, many more are coming.

  • Keep Search In Mind While Being Social

    Keep Search In Mind While Being Social

    As the good content theme continues unabated at BlogWorld, in one of today’s sessions, Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager at Bing, urges the attendees to keep the search industry in mind when you’re out there promoting via Facebook and Twitter.

    Your audience may forget what you posted yesterday, but search engines don’t.

    While Forrester also discusses ways to be an authority with social media and what to consider when optimizing for search, the relationship between search and social media was his main thrust. Because of the immediacy of today’s communication methods, as well as the speed at which these social media posts are indexed into search engines, timeliness in your work matters.

    Trying to catch the tail of something that was popular/trending two days ago means your late and the impact of your quality content could be missed. Beyond that, however, Forrester provides some information on how social media influences the search industry. He mentions the fact that Facebook content is showing up in search engines, well, Bing, thanks to the Facebook/Bing partnership. To further his point, Forrester mentions people delay making purchasing decisions until someone from their social media circle — friends, family — offers their opinion.

    Thanks to the search industry’s embrace of social media, instead of waiting on a Twitter/Facebook update, if a potential customer finds a social media review when conducting a search for the product of interest, leverage has occurred. Granted, if the person searching doesn’t trust the review they find, then your product will probably miss out. That being said, it’s important to get that social content out, and keep the search engines in mind when doing so.

    From Forrester’s perspective, social media in search engine results help the trust quotient because of the personal nature of social media. Essentially, if you have people bragging about your product or the content surrounding it on Facebook and these posts show up in Bing’s results, there’s a good chance people will be more apt to trust your brand/product/content.

    Another point Forrester mentions is also important, although, you might think it’s common knowledge. But then again, if he’s talking about it to conference attendees, maybe it’s not: Make sure you add a link to when you tweet, and/or, post something useful. If people can’t navigate to the item/content they are enjoying, you have failed to convert. Miserably.

    From here, Forrester discussed the sheer amount of content available from the social industry, and seeing it on “paper” is truly staggering. According to his research:

    • 25 billion tweets sent on Twitter in 2010
    • 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
    • 3,000 photos uploaded to Flickr every hour
    • 30 billion posts/month Facebook

    Yeah, that’s a lot of content, which plays into the previous session’s discussion of how hard it is for cream to rise. The problem is, there’s a lot of cream out there. With such an obscene amount of content from the social industry, leveraging it through search is an important feature, otherwise, many of these gems would be lost forever.

    As you can see, search is still a very important aspect of the overall marketing approach, even when social media is your target. Don’t forget about the people actively looking for products related to your focus.

  • Twitter Tests New Search Features

    Some users are seeing something new when they search for a person or topic within Twitter – highlighted search results appearing at the top.

    These new results, “Top News” and “Top People,” look like they are there to point Twitter users in the right direction following searches, to get them to the most relevant results quickly and effortlessly.

    Apparently, when certain users search a topic, let’s say “iPhone battery life,” they now see a standalone box above the rest of the tweet results that says “Top News.” In the box, there’s no tweet with a link to a news story – instead there’s simply a headline, photo, and link to the news story. There’s no word on how Twitter decides which link gets the priority as the top story, but you would think that it has to have something to do with retweets – a similar way in which “top tweets” are determined,

    With the new search features, a search within Twitter for a person, say “Obama” gives you the same standalone result above all the tweets. In this case, the official Twitter account of Barack Obama would be the top person.

    GigaOM has captured this very scenario:

    Twitter has become a new source of news, making millions of people amateur journalists by simply putting out their observations in 140 characters. The “top news” search result looks to give priority to more traditional news outlets – although how much more traditional is left to be determined. Who really knows whose link could turn up as a top news story?

    Twitter has also been testing another new feature – a new timeline view that brings everything inline. That means media like photos and videos would be accessible in your timeline, so you don’t have to go to another page to view it. The new timeline also displays responses to tweets and retweets inline – making it feel a little more like Facebook or Google+‘s commenting system.

    What do you think about the possible new Twitter features? Let us know in the comments.

  • Facebook Comments On Your Site May Show Up in Google Results

    You know that Facebook comments plugin that lets people comment on your content using their Facebook profiles? Apparently Google is indexing those comments on your site now.

    Digital Inspiration illustrates just that (hat tip to Greg Finn). It makes sense, given Google’s continued push toward putting more emphasis on who you are, when it’s delivering search results.

    We’ve heard that Google is likely to launch a Google+-based comments system similar to the Facebook plugin, and it stands to reason that comments from that would appear in search results as well.

    Facebook Comments

    There’s been plenty of debate over the pros and cons of even having comments. Even a Google engineer was recently quoted as saying comments could dilute the quality score o fa page by diluting its overall keyword density.

    Still, with Google is even putting Google+ comments on search results on its own.

    Last week, Facebook launched a “subscribe” link for its comments plugin, allowing users to follow commenters right from there.

    Subscribe from comments

    One positive, on the search side of things, about Facebook’s comments plugin, is that Facebook users are generally real identities, which can help comments to be less spammy, as the profiles are associated with real people, as opposed to anonymous beings.

  • Google Adds New Duplicate Content Messages to Webmaster Tools

    Google announced today that it is launching new Webmaster Tools messages to notify webmasters when its algorithms select an external URL instead of one from their website, in duplicate content scenarios.

    Google defines “cross-domain URL selection” as when the representative URL (the URL representing the content in a duplicate content scenario that Google’s algorithm decides to use) is selected from a group with different sites.

    In other words, the selection Google goes with when two or more sites are showing the same content.

    “When your website is involved in a cross-domain selection, and you believe the selection is incorrect (i.e. not your intention), there are several strategies to improve the situation,” says Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Pierre Far.

    Google highlights three main reasons for unexpected cross-domain URL selections: duplicate content including multi-regional sites, configuration mistakes and malicious site attacks. Far points to various resources for each scenario in this blog post.

    “In rare situations, our algorithms may select a URL from an external site that is hosting your content without your permission,” says Far. “If you believe that another site is duplicating your content in violation of copyright law, you may contact the site’s host to request removal. In addition, you can request that Google remove the infringing page from our search results by filing a request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.”

    At least the WMT messages should help alert you when it’s happening.

  • SEO, Swayze & More Future Awesomeness

    In yesterday’s video round-up we looked at future awesomeness, and today we’re highlighting another future concept video from Microsoft along the same lines. There’s plenty of Google stuff too. Plus a pair of sweet throwback commercials.

    View more video round-ups here.

    The future?

    Hitler reacts to Google’s Panda Update:

    SEOs on Google encrypted search:

    New Google TV Video:

    Not sure if this is the most efficient way to tell time, but it’s still pretty cool:

    This gem is all over the place today:

    A cool animatronic sculpture:

    A PSA from Rob McElhenney of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

    Anthony Bourdain goes to Google:

    The Birds of Anger:

  • Authorship in Google Results to Include Comments, Expanded Circles Features

    Google continues to make changes to the authorship element it displays in search results. Yesterday, we reported on Google now letting you set it up by verifying your email address on your Google Profile, though this makes your email address public, and not all people will want to do this.

    Here are a couple of videos from Google we looked at a while back, explaining how to implement authorship markup:

    About a month ago, we looked at Google adding circle counts for some authors in search results. Today, they announced this and a couple more changes to go with it. Now, they’re showing circle count, “add to circles,” and comments.

    “You should be able to easily engage with and hear more from authors you like, so we’re making that easy by allowing you to add authors to your circles right in search results (this feature is rolling out over the coming weeks),” says Google software engineer Wanda Hung. “Another way you can engage with authors is to comment directly to them on Google+. Now if an author shares an article on Google+ and they get comments on it, you’ll see a link on the search results page to view the comments in Google+.”

    Google shows this example:

    Authorship result

    As we’ve said repeatedly, it’s clear that who you are is more important in Google’s eyes than ever. In August, Google’s Othar Hansson said, “It’s obviously early days, so we hope to use this information and any information as a ranking signal at Google. In this case, we want to get information on credibility of authors from all kinds of sources, and eventually use it in ranking. We’re only experimenting with that now. Who knows where it will go?”

    By the way, in terms of comments showing up, don’t forget that there is likely also a Google+-based comments system for sites on the way.

  • Hitler Not a Fan of the Google Panda Update

    Hitler Not a Fan of the Google Panda Update

    If you use the Internet, there’s a good chance you’ve seen or at least heard of the “Hitler Reacts” videos.

    There are a ton of them. Just go to YouTube and search “Hitler reacts” or “Hitler’s reaction” and you’ll see videos of Hitler reacting to Rebecca Black’s Friday, the iPad, the infamous Kanye West VMAs incident, Modern Warfare 3, the Playstation Network getting hacked, Michael Jackson’s death, Osama Bin Laden’s death, Muse albums, football games, and many other things.

    Suffice it to say, it’s a popular meme.

    Naturally, the Google Panda Update has now been commemorated with one (I’m surprised it took this long). In it, Hitler is informed that his sites have been hit by the update.

  • Link Building, Facebook & Prison

    Today’s infographic round-up looks at the classic web strategy of link building, as well as Major League Baseball and Twitter, the costs of Princeton vs. Prison, and Facebook security.

    View more daily infographic round-ups here.
    10 Commandments of Link Building: Link Building:

    via

    Prison vs. Princeton:

    Prison vs Princeton
    Created by: Public Administration

    Facebook security:

    Facebook Security Infographic

  • Petition Seeks to Keep Google From Blocking Referral Data

    Earlier this month, Google announced that it would begin encrypting search queries with SSL as the default experience at Google.com for users who search while logged into their accounts.

    Sites visited from Google’s organic listings will be able to tell that the traffic is coming from Google, but they won’t be able to receive info about each individual query. They will, however, receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to the site for each of the past 30 days in Webmaster Tools.

    “This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic,” said Google product manager Evelyn Kao. “If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.”

    “When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google ‘organic’ search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site,” said Amy Chang on the Google Analytics blog. “Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic. You will continue to see aggregate query data with no change, including visits from users who aren’t signed in and visits from Google ‘cpc’.”

    “We are still measuring all SEO traffic. You will still be able to see your conversion rates, segmentations, and more,” she added. “To help you better identify the signed in user organic search visits, we created the token ‘not provided)’ within Organic Search Traffic Keyword reporting. You will continue to see referrals without any change; only the queries for signed in user visits will be affected. Note that ‘cpc’ paid search data is not affected.”

    Since all of this was announced there has been a fair amount of backlash from the webmaster/SEO community. There’s a petition at KeywordTransparency.com (via Danny Sullivan) for Google not to take away referral data.

    The about section attached to the petition says: “This petition has been created to show Google the level of dissatisfaction over their recent changes to keyword referral information, and will be presented to the search quality and analytics teams at Google. The argument that this has been done for privacy reasons sadly holds little weight, and the move essentially turns the clock back in terms of data transparency. The argument that this only affects <10% of users is also concerning as this is likely to increase over time, even up to a point where it affects the majority of users being referred from search." It is certainly true that Google is doing a lot to get people signing up for Google accounts (obviously Google+).

    The actual letter that you’re signing when you sign the petition says:

    Dear Google,

    As publishers of content on the internet, we feel that the removal of keyword referrer information from the natural search results damages our ability to deliver good quality content to our users.

    By removing this data Google is not only hurting legitimate websites, but potentially pushing lower quality sites further into black hat data collection methods (ie spyware) in order to compensate for this data loss.

    We believe that the security argument is fatally undermined by the inconsistency in allowing keyword data to still be sent unsecured via your advertisers.

    There are ways of securely sending keyword referral information to websites without compromising privacy, and without negatively affecting webmasters’ ability to create good quality websites, and we ask that you seriously consider alternatives to the current implementation that would support this.

    Yours,
    [insert name here]

    And look at the list. Matt Cutts is even on it multiple times (guessing not really Matt Cutts).

    Do you agree with what this petition is saying? Let us know what you think in the comments.

  • PRWeb Discusses Panda Impact

    PRWeb Discusses Panda Impact

    Press release distribution services BusinessWire and PRNewswire were both cited as losers in search visibility by the hands of Google’s Panda Update, by data released by Searchmetrics throughout the year. However, PRWeb, another service in this category, appears to have done fairly well.

    PRWeb put up a blog post discussing the impact the Panda Update has had its traffic. Here’s the graph they provide, indicating that traffic has gone up over the course of time since Panda was first announced.

    Panda PRWEB  

    The company says:

    The methodology that Google uses to algorithmically determine whether a site is “low-value” or not, is a matter of some debate however Google has been forthcoming in explaining that it involved their “standard evaluation system,” where they “send out documents to outside testers,” review the feedback and then determine how to algorithmically simulate the experience of quality evaluation.

    The key in all of this is to remember that Panda is really about editorial quality.  For years, PRWeb has employed a refined set set of editorial guidelines, informed largely by standards set by established media institutions (e.g. the Associated Press), which are clearly considered to be “high quality.”  Our editorial guidelines, which have been the source of some debate in the past, are one of the main reasons we have been able to maintain certain standards for our content while enhancing the authority of PRWeb.com in search and expanding our distribution network.

    It should be further noted that in addition to our editorial guidelines, we are also constantly iterating our site and the manner in which we syndicate content to ensure ongoing compliance with the evolving standards that Google and other search engines maintain.  This combination of editorial oversight and technological iteration has helped us significantly increase our traffic in the “year of the Panda” while some notable high volume content sites have been hurt.

    I guess the question is: what has PRWeb done right that the others haven’t. Any takers?

  • The Best of Twitter TV & Mark Cuban Singing Purple Rain

    Twitter has become a big part of television watching for a lot of people. It’s certainly been big for a lot shows as well. Twitter has compiled a best of reel. Also Mark Cuban sings Purple Rain.

    View more daily video round-ups here.

    The Best of Twitter TV:

    The Best of Twitter TV from TwitterHQ on Vimeo.

    Twitter tests a new Timeline:

    A pretty sweet zombie pumpkin:

    Mark Cuban sings Purple Rain:

    Mike Tyson quotes turned into an awesome song:

    Google’s Matt Cutts talks blocking Googlebot from crawling a dynamically generated calendar:

    Google parties at the Academy of Natural Sciences:

    Spherical flying machine:

  • Firefox with Bing Introduced

    Firefox with Bing Introduced

    Microsoft and Mozilla have teamed up to include a new version of Firefox with Bing built in as the default search.

    “Now Firefox users who are Bing enthusiasts can use Firefox with Bing to use the Web the way they want without having to take extra steps to navigate or customize their settings to Bing,” says Bing’s Tor Steiner.

    I’d be curious to know what percentage of Firefox users are “Bing enthusiasts,” or for that matter, what percentage of Bing users prefer Firefox to Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer.

    Still, any increase in default search experiences powered by Bing should help Bing to some extent. Firefox does control about 20% of the browser market (StatOwl).

    “Firefox with Bing offers the latest version of Firefox with Bing set as your home page and the default setting in the search box and AwesomeBar (where you can also type in queries as well as Web addresses),” says Steiner. “If you already have the latest version of Firefox, then you just need to download the Bing Search for Firefox Add-on to set the same preferences.”

    Firefox with Bing

    Firefox with Bing itself can be downloaded here.

  • 5 Steps Beyond Competitive Link Analysis

    The job of link building is getting tougher. The introduction of encrypted searches, the series of Panda updates, and whatever Google come up with next is putting more and more pressure on us all to drop any shortcuts and concentrate on quality link building. And the proven formula for quality link building is ‘great content, well promoted, equals great links’.

    Not only must we continue to create great content, we’ve got to find more quality sites from which to get links. And to find more quality sites, we’ve got to go beyond simple competitive link analysis.

    For many marketers, the first thought in link building is to do a competitive link analysis and then target the sites that are linking to your competitors but not to you.

    That’s a good start, but it will never bring you all you need: if ‘follow your competitors’ is all you do, you’ll only be chasing links from sites where your competitors have already succeeded and that means you’ll always be behind them.

    To be really effective in link building we’ve got to be more creative and go way beyond competitive link analysis in looking for new link opportunities.

    Step 1: Broaden your idea of relevance

    You have got to have relevant links, right?

    That’s true but it’s only part of the picture. Many people’s idea of relevance is limiting.

    Take BobsRedMill.com who produce whole grain foods. As you’d expect they get links from food sites like Chow.com, Epicurious.com and VegWeb.com.

    But they also get links from:

    All of these are relevant links in the context in which they appear.

    If you take only a limited view of relevance, you won’t even think of opportunities like these.

    Step 2: Maximize your relationship with sites that already link to you

    Sites that have already taken the step of linking to you, have done so for a reason. Do you really understand what that reason is and what their motivation is for going to the trouble of writing the code that gives you the all important link?

    Perhaps:

    • they’ve used your products and found them particularly useful
    • you solved a specific problem for them
    • they’re compiling a resource list
    • perhaps they’re posting on a specific topic and they found something you wrote relevant
    • …etc.

    Discovering the specific reasons why gives you the basis of strengthening your relationship with a site. That could lead to:

    • further coverage and links in the future
    • keyword-rich linking text
    • links to deep content on your site
    • interest in joint ventures or affiliate relationships
    • and much more…

    You get the idea – linking to you is a sign that they’re interested in what you’re doing and you should follow up with something that strengthens your relationship.

    Step 3: Check out who links to the sites that link to you

    So you’ve looked at sites that link to you, you’ve understood why they linked, and you’ve approached them to strengthen your relationship. Now it’s time to move on and win some new links.

    The sites that already link to you can be seen as an informal ‘organic link network’ that has evolved due to their interest in what you do. Sites that link to them are also sites that are likely to be interested in what you do.

    For example, Footlocker.com get a link from the fashion blog [Nitrolicious.com] which in turn gets a link from another fashion blog, [ElementsOfStyle.com] – that blog and many hundreds of others could be more targets for Footlocker.com.

    So find out who links to the sites that link to you and you’ll find many more linking opportunities.

    Step 4: Check out who links to the top magazines in your market

    Top magazines in your market can be a great source of high quality link prospects.

    Magazines, newspapers and online news sites often quote and link to each other, so compiling links to the top magazine will reveal many other media outlets. This helps you build lists of target publications and identifies journalists and editors who could be interested in your company. Furthermore, bloggers will comment upon, link to and share any interesting article or news piece they come across.

    So if you’re interested in ‘gourmet food’ for example, sites that link to leading food magazines like bonappetit.com, saveur.com, cooksillustrated.com, foodandwine.com and epicurious.com
    are likely to be of great interest.

    Step 5: Collect lists of the top blogs in your market

    Link building is a tough task and you need all the help you can get. So how about getting some help from all those wonderful people out there who compile lists on the ‘top blogs’ in any given industry. Such people will probably have reviewed the sites, maybe even published some metrics that can help you identify blogs that you can target.

    For example, SportsManagementColleges.net provide a list of the [top 50 skiing blogs]

    And even better, you can use the top blogs that you find as I’ve used the top magazines in the example above. Blogs tend to link to and comment upon posts made by other blogs in their industry. So using them as a source for finding new links is very productive.

    Finally

    I’ve outlined 5 techniques for going beyond competitive link analysis and being creative in where you look for new link prospects. But of course, don’t just follow my ideas, develop your own unique methods and you’ll soon be discovering a ton of relevant link prospects that you competitors haven’t even thought of.

    And, if you’ve got some good prospecting techniques I haven’t mentioned, please post them in the comments below.

  • Google Lets You Export Your Blocked Sites From Chrome to Google Account

    Google has added a new export feature to its Chrome extension that lets you block sites from your search results. You can export the list from Chrome to your Google account.

    This makes a lot of sense, as you should be able to keep these sites blocked from whatever browser or computer you happen to be using.

    “By storing your personal blocked sites list with your Google account, Google hides these sites from your search results when you’re signed in,” says Google Search Quality Engineer Ray Zhong.

    Block Domains in Google Results

    “The sites that you export will be hidden from your searches while you are signed into your account,” Zhong says. “You can unblock or manage the blocked sites at any time in the Search Settings Blocked Sites screen.”

    If you use the extension, just click the extension’s logo, select “export” from the screen that shows your personal blacklist, then click “export to Google”. You can then disable the extension if you want.

    Of course the Chrome extension already wasn’t the only way users could block sites. There’s a feature right in Google’s results themselves that let you block the site after you’ve visited it.

    Google has made it clear that that it takes into account blocked sites in its ranking algorithm.

    So, if you’re producing content that is likely to irritate people when they’re searching for something, this may hurt you. The moral of the story is to produce content that doesn’t irritate people.

    Still, I’d be interested to know how much these site blocking features are really being used.

  • Google: No Panda Tweak on October 20

    Google: No Panda Tweak on October 20

    Yesterday, we reported that there was some suspicion from webmasters that Google had tweaked the Panda Update yet again on October 20.

    Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable, who pointed to some of this discussion in the WebmasterWorld forums dubbed it Panda 2.5.3.

    We reached out to Google for confirmation that what these webmasters were experiencing was indeed a tweak to Panda. As you may know, Google makes hundreds of algorithm changes a year, and it’s always possible that various changes can impact your search visibility.

    Google finally got back to us, saying that there was no Panda update on October 20 or on October 19.

    It would not have been much of a surprise if there had been a Panda tweak on that date, as Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, recently said that we should expect more tweaks over the coming weeks.

    I would expect that we will continue to see additional Panda Updates, and possibly even more tweaks to the most recent major version, but it doesn’t look like that’s what it was this time.

    It does illustrate the lesson that there are so many different ways your content’s visibility can fluctuate in Google’s search results. Panda has certainly been a controversial example, and it’s fun to talk about because of its name and all, but there are unnamed changes happening constantly, and any one of them could potentially affect your site.

  • Google’s “+” Search Operator is No More

    Google has decided to shut down an old search operator: the “+” operator. Historically, it’s been used when you want to tell Google that you want to include specific words together in a query. Now, they’re taking a different approach.

    Google search community manager Kelly F says on the company’s help forum (via Search Engine Land):

    We’ve made the ways you can tell Google exactly what you want more consistent by expanding the functionality of the quotation marks operator. In addition to using this operator to search for an exact phrase, you can now add quotation marks around a single word to tell Google to match that word precisely. So, if in the past you would have searched for [magazine +latina], you should now search for [magazine “latina”].

    We’re constantly making changes to Google Search – adding new features, tweaking the look and feel, running experiments, – all to get you the information you need as quickly and as easily as possible. This recent change is another step toward simplifying the search experience to get you to the info you want.

    A Google spokesperson has also been offering around the following canned statement: “We’re streamlining the ways you can tell Google to search for the exact keywords you type, whether it’s an exact phrase or a single word, by focusing on the functionality of the quotation marks operator.”

    As you might imagine, not everyone is thrilled with the changes. Some are wondering why they had to get rid of the one people have used for so long, even if they wanted to add the quotation mark functionality. There is also a lot of criticism about how it is actually harder to perform these types of searches now, with added steps. This is strange, considering Google’s usual emphasis on speed.

    One Google+ user, SignpostMarv Martin (Google does seem to be lenient on some of these pseudonyms already), writes:

    “How does requiring us to type two characters instead of one in order to ensure that a key word appears in the search results simplify the search experience? For that matter, how do random and unannounced changes requiring us to change our documentation (and you you’re own – which you haven’t done) help anyone? If you want to expand the functionality of quotation marks, that’s great, but why remove functions that have worked before?”

    “Oddly, other popular and long-standing search operators, such as OR and the – symbol, are unchanged, leading to speculation by some that the move is to cut down on confusion with the Google+ social networking site.”

    Is it to cut down on confusion with Google+ or could Google be planning a way to make it easier to search Google+ itself from Google.com? There is no indication of this so far, but it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. Remember, “Google+ is Google,” and the company has made it abundantly clear that who you are matters more in search than ever. Why not make it easy to find people from Google?

    Here are some Twitter reactions:

    @MrBryanDunn
    Bryan Dunn    Local bald man angry over Google’s removal of the ‘+’ search command. http://t.co/msVXzPVi 19 minutes ago via Twitter for Mac · powered by @socialditto

    @zoonini
    Kathryn Presner    RIP +. Wonder if the minus sign will be next? RT @jeffscott: aaaaaargh!! #Google Removes The + #Search Command http://t.co/i2oiEgPq 1 hour ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

    @danieldeceuster
    Daniel Deceuster    Sad day, the + search operator is gone! http://t.co/oLxfba8H I used it a lot, hopefully quality of my search results doesn’t go down… 2 hours ago via Timely by Demandforce · powered by @socialditto

    @netmeg
    netmeg    Google adds plus signs all over the freaking place and removes it from the one place it belongs – as a search operator. http://t.co/OZeghIn4 3 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @Techokami
    Techokami    google search… RUINED! I used + as a boolean operator because it was faster, now I have to use Bing 35 minutes ago via Echofon · powered by @socialditto

    I haven’t seen anyone say anything like, “Finally, Google removed that stupid + search command.” It seems like Google may have missed the mark on user experience this time.

    You can still use “+” when doing addition problems in Google.