Ripples is a feature available on Google +. This is basically Google’s version of Facebook insights but obviously because the big G has put it together, it has that extra crisp feel to it. Google sees a post as a pebble being thrown into water. When a pebble is thrown into the water it creates a ripple which bounces of other objects and can cover different distances depending on the weight of that pebble. The “heavier” pebbles are posts that have more value for content and Google + users respond to and make comments on.
Google ripples displays all + users who have been involved with that post. It orders this information through where they saw the post. They may not have found the post directly from you and this is shown in the analytics.
In the future, Google + could potentially become the most dominant of social networks, and with their business pages now available, Google + has everything it needs to overtake Facebook. It is very likely that we see a huge amount of companies, ranging from SEO to retail services, all available on Google +. If this is the case, then analytics such as ripples, will be widely useful.
In comparison to Facebook insights, ripples show a detailed path of each post, whereas insights shows general information about each post and statistics for that page. One problem with ripples would be that it does show how many people were involved in great detail, however the reach for the post is not shown and this is something that is important, especially for those taking to social media for new sources of business.
Google released one of the most interactive doodles yet, this doodle was to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Stanislaw Lem and his first ever book publication. Lem was a polish Sci Fi author and was best known for his novel called Solaris which was published in 1961. This novel was later made into a film which starred George Clooney in 2002.
Unlike previous doodles, when clicking on the animation, Google users are not transported onto another page, the animation continues and the little character walks along the screen to a giant robot with a somewhat untrustworthy calculator. Once this mini game is completed, the character walks up to another challenge in which you have to match up the lines in an oscilloscope, and your final task is to shoot a robot out of a cannon to hit a satellite dish. As you complete each task, you collect a part to build some form of robot. Towards the end, the head is added to the giant robot and explodes, sending you to the results page for Stanislaw Lem.
For those that don’t know much about Lem, this doodle can seem somewhat confusing but fun at the same time. Either way this doodle is very elaborate and must have took some work on Google’s end, which makes a change from their usual algorithm updates that constantly evolve SEO. This doodle is without a doubt, a great tribute to an age old Sci Fi novel and author.
Optimising your social media profile is very similar to a website. There are fields like bio and name which are like the page title and description, but the main advantage is that if you are regularly using these profiles, then your page will have fresh and regular content, which Google loves. So how do you make the most of this opportunity?
Firstly, these profiles will naturally rank quite high when searching the name of the profile in Google. If there is a consistency in the profile names, for example all of our profiles are named either SEO Positive or SEO Positive LTD, these naturally rank. However, if we want our Twitter, Facebook and Google plus profiles to pop up when someone searches the name SEO Positive, how do we do that?
Link building, it is a very simple technique that works with websites and also social media profiles. If you or your company has a blog, throw a link in to your profile, for example you can mention the word Twitter, and link your Twitter profile to that. If you want to take the more extreme route, you can use an anchor text link with your business name. This is the best thing you can do to optimise your profiles. By making an effort of linking to your profiles in each of your blogs, even if they are guest posts, then your profiles will rank higher because of this.
Having your social media profiles rank higher is great for things like reputation management, because it makes your profiles more visible to potential customers which will not only help increase your following, but also help your customers get to know you and your company a little better.
Conclusion
Because your own company name is not a very competitive key term, so you should see results quite soon, and if you make a conscious effort to send links in the direction of your social media profiles, then your profiles will stay up there and not only help build your fan base or following, but help build and maintain your current reputation.
Believe or not there is a positive for Googles’ freshness update, although you as an SEO may not see it straight away due to the tedious content update. It is actually a good thing that it has been released.
Keeping the Numbers Up
We all know Google receives the most searches globally, and that is because it provides the best search results, and it does that by having one of the toughest algorithms a search engine could have. Websites are optimised for Google to help put them up in the SERP’s, but if no one used Google as a search engine, then no one would optimise their site for the big G! The freshness update is just another element that keeps Google on top as the boss of search.
Searching Far and Wide
With search engines that are not as developed as Google, users must check a lot more pages to find the desired information, but with Google searches are resolved quicker and position 1 gets roughly 50% of total traffic. With the freshness update, the most recent and therefore most likely relevant results will appear higher. Freshness is yet another update that helps to make Google SERP’s the most accurate.
Quality, Not Quantity
Google has always loved good quality content, but now the pressure to provide content of such a high standard is on. Before the fresh new update from Google, some sites had a blog and some didn’t, but now it is more important and beneficial than ever. Not only to have a blog, but regularly update it too! This is contributing to better quality of not only content but the web design and the whole website as a whole.
Conclusion
If Google did not update their search engine with updates like this then they wouldn’t be on top, we all know Google is possibly one of the most demanding things for an SEO, but it has its benefits for its’ users and the websites that appear in the SERP’s, whether we can notice it or not.
Google announced yesterday that there have been some more changes in their annoying algorithm. A total of 10 changes have been made public but that does not necessarily mean there isn’t any more.
For the full list, visit their inside search blog for the full details. The most important update is most likely the freshness update. It was announced on the 3rd but has been added to this list, this somewhat emphasises how important the freshness factor is.
The freshness update is looking for the most recent content in a nutshell. Google believes that it is more likely for someone to be searching for information that is more up to date, instead of historical information. However some may be using Google to research past events, the majority use Google for recent updates. That is what the update is telling us anyway.
SEOh NO!
No need to panic in terms of SEO, we all know that Google loves content and it always will. This freshness update may have become somewhat of a surprise but this update can be used to an advantage. The majority of people do have a blog which naturally relates to their business, so if you are not already, just make sure your blog is regularly updated.
Yesterday we were all made aware of the long awaited release for Google Plus, but we need to think whether there is much point spending a lot of time designing and creating another page, when you already have a Facebook page. There is one feature that puts Google Plus’ pages in another league to Facebook and their Fan pages.
Hangouts where one of the major features of Google +, even when there were not business pages available, it allowed up to 10 people to chat using video and audio and even more people to be able to join by text chat. This can really benefit a lot of different type of people and pages, but in terms of pages and businesses, it can become a great asset for many reasons.
My first example would be a support feature. The hangout can be started by the page and simply name the room as support. Then any customer or potential customer that has a question or needs help can join the room and ask for help accordingly. Because of the video chat capabilities, face to face interaction is possible, but not only that, demonstrations can also be shown. If a customer for example, does not know how to use their product, then the customer services in the hangouts can show exactly what to do.
On top of that, if a business is releasing a new product or maybe a new SEO Package something along those lines, then hangouts can be used to demonstrate the product and build up hype. Plus, if customers are in the hangout, then they can ask questions directly about it that specifically intrigues them. This means that customers will have the opportunity to get tailored information instantly.
Conclusion
Of course there are a few more examples, and really the sky is the limit in this case. Each business will use hangouts differently but they are there and they can be a great selling point, not only that, it increases customer service standards and creates a relationship between the business and the customer. I think hangouts ia a great feature, and the fact that pages can use them too is great! Definitely one more reason why Google Plus Pages are more resourceful than Facebook Fan Pages.
Google Plus has finally released the ability to create pages! The long awaited moment is finally here and now Google Plus can be used for businesses.
G+ released a video, as they religiously do whenever something is released, showing how having your business on Google Plus can be beneficial. It explains that it enables you to connect more with your customers, or even potential customers and build a relationship with them, creating one of the best possible customers to brand relationships available.
Tools like Hangouts and Circles can still be used even for the pages, which means that businesses can actually hang out with their customers. This is a great opportunity and has an endless list of possibilities, for example a question and answer session online, or an instructional video where customers can ask for help there and then.
This hangout feature creates convenience with customer service and provides a platform where it can be as close to real life as possible.
In the next few days I will be optimizing a Google Plus page for SEO Positive and oversee how my efforts have increased positions and so on. From what I have seen so far, Google Pages are put together very well in the sense that they are extremely similar to the Google + profiles, however they can represent a business and in my opinion they are better than Facebook pages because of the possibilities that are available currently.
Google has just updated their social network, Google +, and they have heavily integrated YouTube into plus.
They have added, what they like to call a slider, which is a small YouTube icon that sticks to the top right of the page, once you click on the icon it “slides” out and asks what you would like to play. You can type in a word and it will bring you up a playlist of relevant videos and you can listen or watch videos whilst networking on Google Plus.
One problem I would point out is that it pops out in another window and obviously if your using Google + then the YouTube window disappears behind the window. So you have to resize all of the windows and it just gets complicated and downright annoying.
Conclusion
I think what Google have done isn’t necessarily a bad thing but there is no doubt that there is room for improvement.
Google has released an update inside Adwords, and it is all to do with location targeting. The update makes it possibly to target specific towns and even counties with your PPC campaign, this is a great feature and allows Google users to be as specific as they can with their campaigns.
Before Google released this update, there were two choices, you could choose a radius, or you could attempt to draw the area that you want to cover. Obviously there are a lot of issues with this because it is fairly inaccurate because at the end of the day it is all down to guess work. Guessing is the last thing you should be doing with PPC and Google has finally recognized that.
With the new update, just simply type in the town or county you want to target and it will come up with something like this:
It shows variations of what you have searched for, so you can get exactly where your targeting. Not only that, but it also provides you with how many people are in that area, so you can see how many potential customers you are reaching out to.
Once you have selected your area, it will show up like this.
As you can see this is a very detailed outline of the area, which is essential to targeting the right locations.
Conclusion
This update to Adwords is brilliant for PPC managers because it allows for precise targeting, this isn’t just something for the PPC ninjas out there, it can be used by the average Joe due to its’ simplicity in how it is set up. The only problem I have found is that it cannot target the smaller areas, like an area within a city. I found this by searching for Broomfield, which is in Chelmsford, and Chelmsford does show up on the precise targeting locations, but due to Broomfields’ small population (when compared to areas like London) it does not show. Google has obviously targeted the areas that are worth targeting and I think the problem I found will rarely pop up. All in all, great job on the update Google, this will give Adwords an easier usability by far.
It’s no secret that the Android platform is a serious contender for Apple’s iPhone and has been for some time, forcing both companies to become involved in a bitter dispute over the design and build of many of the features of each system.
But the feud has heated up even further this week after Steve Jobs, the recently deceased founder of Apple Inc., authorised the release of a biography today (24th October) that communicates his hatred for Google’s ‘innovation’ and his fury at the introduction of the company’s rival operating system, which has grown in popularity in recent months and obtained a higher share of the market than anticipated throughout the third business quarter.
In the book, which was penned by Walter Isaacson and has leapt to the top of Amazon’s bestsellers chart already, Jobs claims that he’s going to ‘destroy Android because it’s a stolen product’, and goes on to say that ‘they (Google) are scared to death because they know they are guilty’.
Isaacson conducted interviews with Steve himself, as well as a number of family members and close friends, in the two years leading up to his death before Jobs lost his ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer on 5th October. The writer has described Steve’s inherent anger when he was asked to discuss Android and, in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes”, documents his tendency to portray a ‘brittle’, ‘petulant’ and ‘mean’ character.
Ironically, relations have been mutually good between the two companies in the past, with Jobs acting as a mentor to Google’s founder Larry Page and allowing company boss Eric Schmidt to sit on Apple’s board of directors. Despite the row, a number of high profile employees from Google’s camp have paid tribute to Jobs since he passed away, with Page describing him as ‘a great man with incredible achievements’.
