The internet, and search in particular, has been moving through a new social phase in recent history. Google’s most recent initiative Search, plus Your World is taking this trend even further.
Google have made attempts to personalise search before, but this time it will deeply integrate Google+ Social Network with Google Search making it essential for businesses to review their social strategy, create a Google+ business profile and put some effort into its maintenance.
Search, plus Your World isn’t going to just present user with personalised content from Google+, but also take into account users Circles, Contacts and interests. Google’s “integration strategy” really stands out when taking into account the recent announcement, regarding merging privacy policies and terms of service for 60 individual products into one all-encompassing document that will lead to even deeper integration of search and Google+, along with other Google products. The updated policy will take effect in March this year, and will basically make all the content accessible across all the Google services. This, in line with the fact that from now on, each new Google account will be automatically joined to Google+ network, suggests that there is no avoiding using Google+ after all.
But let’s get back to Search, plus Your World.You can check original post here on the Official Google Blog, but briefly, the 3 new features being rolled out are: Personal Results, that will deliver personalised content from Google+ along with the usual web search output. Personalised content will include posts, photos, and videos from Google+ both private and public. This certainly does put enabling SSL encryption for search last year into perspective.
Second and third features are really about the same thing; that is easier access to Google+ profiles. Profiles in Search, both on SERP and in autocomplete, will allow instantly find people interested in the topic. This is however not the only way Google is going to integrate Google+ Pages with search. People and Pages block on SERP, with a list of Google+ profiles closely related to the topic.
Google realise that sometimes this innovation may not be something users are looking for, so they allow users toggle Search, plus Your World on and off with just one click.
There has been a lot of discussion going on whether it is a good direction for Google to take or is it just a way for Google to abuse their web dominance and exert an in-house social network on users. This way or another, all those new features announced by Google are really about one thing – deeper integration with Google+. This adds yet another dimension to Online Strategy of any business. Going further, it will become harder and harder to rely solely on conventional SEO and SEM. In short, the landscape of online interaction is changing and businesses are forced to change their websites to reflect this (e.g. including social element to the content) and more importantly create new content that adds value and is interesting and useful for customers.
First Rate have already started to identify how Google+ can help improve clients results. Contact us for information about how we can help you optimise this new, essential marketing channel.
There has been confusion recently around the meaning, and more importantly the value, of Facebook “Likes” versus “Shares”. The enthusiasm of companies to engage their audience through social media has been validated by several studies into the influence of social media platforms on organic rankings, including a study by SEOmoz earlier this year that revealed a strong correlation between number of Facebook “Shares” and higher rankings on Google for competitive keywords, although always remember that correlation isn’t causation (and that may especially be true in this case). But how do we distinguish between “Likes” and “Shares”, especially following news that the latter term is being gradually retired from Facebook’s terminology?
You may assume the basic difference is as follows: “Liking” a page adds the content to your Interests section on your Facebook profile, whereas “Sharing” a page results in a post on your Facebook wall. This is not entirely correct. Clicking “Like” does not automatically add it to your interests page, it depends on how the page in question has been tagged using Facebooks OGP, meaning Open Graph Protocol, and this determines what action that will be taken after hitting the “Like” button. For example, if a page has been tagged as an article and “Liked” by a reader, it will not appear in your Interest section, and therefore the publisher won’t broadcast their posts on your Facebook feed. The article that was “Liked” will only show up in the interests section if it has been tagged differently, for example as a “restaurant” or “website”.
The OGP can be easily implemented on content on a page using basic meta tags and their four required properties. For this example we are using a page on IMDB for the movie “The Big Lebowski”.
og:title – The title of your object as it should appear within the graph (eg. “The Big Lebowski”)
og:type – The object type (eg. “movie”, “article” or “website”). Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol defines over 30 object “types” tailored to activities, businesses, people, places, websites and other objects (full list here). If your URL is a piece of content – such as a news article, photo, video, or similar – you should set og:type to “article”. Note that pages tagged as an “article” will not show up on user’s profiles because they are not real world objects.
og:image – An image URL representing your object, must be at least 50px by 50px and either PNG, JPEG or GIF format.
In addition to the four required properties above, there are also three optional meta properties that can be used to provide a human-readable name for your site and more detailed descriptions. There are also more advanced meta data options for multimedia content, contact information and locations.
Facebook also implemented the “Insights” dashboard last year, allowing users to track “Like” button clicks and impressions. The tool is quite powerful, featuring functionalities such as the ability to analyse trends within user growth, demographic information, and use of content.
The following points should be considered when deciding whether to implement Facebook “Shares”, “Likes” or both on your domain:
Shares
Detailed post on user’s wall (similar to copy/pasting a URL into you Facebook status bar).
Higher probability of user’s friends clicking on the link.
A high number of “Shares” correlates to higher organic rankings.
Likes
Detailed post on a user’s wall (provided users comment on their like).
Can add the “Liked” page to the user’s interest section (depending on OGP tagging).
Subscribes user to the publisher’s Facebook feed (depending on OGP tagging), giving the publisher the ability to reach their target audience multiple times in the future.
Facebook gather’s data around “likes” and can use this to recommend pages to your Facebook friends.
There are clear benefits to implementing a mixture of both “Likes” and “Shares” on your Facebook pages and domains. Placing “Share” buttons on unique content on your website can serve as a means of driving traffic back to your domain as users post links on their Facebook accounts. From here one can encourage users to “Like” a Facebook page and grab those long-term feed subscriptions.
For e-tailers especially, gaining “Likes” from existing and new customers can be a very effective means of encouraging repeat business. Here’s an ideal example: An online retailer that sells books and DVDs and has a large number of Facebook “Likes”, a weekly “best sellers” or promotional offer published on the e-tailer’s wall would likely result in a high volume of clicks from their followers and achieve a higher conversion rate due to the followers’ familiarity with the online retailer. Using Facebook “Likes” in this instance could prove a very valuable strategy to gain additional referral sales, at virtually no cost.
Looking for an innovative way to get your website to rank in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)..? Aspects of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are now being counted amongst the ranking factors that make up Google’s algorithm. Have you adapted your website and marketing strategy accordingly?
Facebook
Facebook has achieved massive market penetration worldwide and New Zealand is no exception. Accordingly, Google now factors Likes and Shares into its ranking algorithm. Recent research by SEOmoz suggests that of the two, Facebook Shares may carry more SEO authority (and is therefore more likely to yield you ranking gains) than Likes. It is important for websites to create “likeable” and “shareable” content users will want to tell their friends about!
Twitter
Google has confirmed in the past that tweets count towards rankings. Specifically, being tweeted about by a user with a significant number of followers, and people they follow back, has more authority than a user with only a handful. Tweets from top contributors are also more likely to be retweeted, meaning your business should be looking at strategies to get these people to talk about you as a future proofing measure.
Google’s +1
First Rate has previously commented on Google’s “+1” initiative which allows users to vote for pages and search results. This is an initiative yet to take significant shape, but one to watch in the future.
First Rate is available to consult on social media initiatives as part of a holistic SEO strategy.
Agencies have greeted Google’s launch of “+1″ with a lukewarm response, the new social search initiative that will enable users to recommend AdWords campaigns.
The launch of “+1” has been compared to Facebook’s “like” button, which works in a similar way. The social service appears as a small button that will sit next to every Google Search result.
Online users can click the “+1” button and the content or ad will be shared with their social circle, and the public. The button also works on ads that appear in Google Search. Over the coming months, the project will also allow website publishers including news sites and blogs to install buttons with a “+1″ logo on their web pages.
Director and creative partner at The Works, Douglas Nicol, cautioned that Google maybe attributing too much importance to peer recommendation: “This helps further social search through social proofing search results because the item returned is from a ‘trust’ source such as a friend or colleague. The implication for marketers is we need to develop a better understanding of what sources of information your target consumer trusts – increasingly there is evidence that close friends may not be the most trusted source.”
Mark Baartse, consulting director at search specialist First Rate, says it’s too early to judge the launch of “+1”, and is unimpressed by the name and the button itself.
“It feels a little bit mathematical and analytical; it lacks the appeal of ‘liking’ through Facebook or ‘tweeting’ on Twitter. I think a lot of people will adopt the button on their content quickly. Although Google got it wrong with its ill-fated social recommendation service Buzz, it’s not game over yet, but they still have a lot of catching up with Facebook to do.”
However, Andrew Hughes, senior consultant for SEO and SMO at MediaBrands search specialist, Reprise Media, believes the move could alter the way that some people use Google’s search engine, which accounts for the vast majority of the company’s nearly $US 30 billion ($29.1 billion) in annual revenue.
“Microsoft’s search engine Bing has Facebook integration and Google’s “+1” is their attempt to infiltrate the social space. Recommendation may be the strongest form of advertising, advertising can activate this, and build long term loyalty and recommendation.”
Hughes said the “+1″ may also allow brands to target “niche audiences through specific content types,” adding “essentially it could increase the appeal of a website or ad to be clicked by a user in the search results, and longer term once Google gets past any gaming and spamming issues, it could become the ‘+1/LikeRank’ of the future which determines relevance.”
The new search feature won’t replace Google’s traditional search results, which are based on a mathematical algorithm that attempts to rank sites based on how relevant they are to a user’s query.
The search giant is expected to fuse other Google-owned properties such as YouTube with “+1″, and eventually Google will launch a way to connect all of those services into a major social-networking service to rival Facebook.
I have to admit, I’ve never been a big fan of Google’s social search. Unless Google knows something about your social network, then the few suggestions it offers are pretty useless. In most cases, Google knows little about you – unless you are one of the three avid Google Buzz users in the world!
Last night I was at home. I was signed in using an account I don’t use very much, mostly used as a spam trap. The account is markbaa AT gmail dot com.
I did a search and was very surprised to see this in the results:
“Want to see which results your friends are talking about? Are you markbaa?”.
That was a link to my twitter profile, offering to link it to my login. Google doesn’t know much about the markbaa gmail account as I rarely use it. So it’s either just lucky guessing – same name, or something super clever.I also use markbaa for my linked in profile and facebook profile. Why didn’t it suggest these as well? Still under development and I stumbled on an early test?
I asked around the First Rate office, no one else had seen this. So either it is a test (more likely), or it has to have a very high confidence threshold before making the recommendation.
If they roll this out en masse, could be that Google Social Search actually becomes useful!
Mark Baartse, Consulting Director, First Rate Australia.
