search engine
Twitter criticizes Google On the Update
Google has received criticism from Twitter on it’s major search update that was unveiled on Tuesday. Twitter claimed that it’s totally “bad” for web users as the update has made it harder for the users to find information.
The recent update Search Plus Your World allows Google to show results in SERP from it’s social networking platform in order to offer a personalized search experience for the users.
Twitter in a statement told that latest enhancements will not help the search engine giant when it comes to providing real time personalized information within its search results.
The statement said “Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant (search) results,” .”We’re concerned that, as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”
Alex Macgillivray tweeted that ” the update from Google is a bad day for internet”.Both Google and Twitter are battling for dominance in the social market which is currently headed by Facebook.
Search Plus Your World launched by Google
Come 2012 and Google has introduced quite a lot of features thats going to bring clarity to many features they have made over the past few months.These changes include the creation of their own social media network and implementation of SSL search. Over the next few days in Google.com you will be witnessing their new change called “Search Plus Your World”.
The new feature will bring results from Google+ in the search results at the click of a button.The results include People,Pages and Profiles that are fully integrated into search results.
When personalization icon is clicked for a search query it pulls out posts and pictures from their friends circle into their search results.Already in the search results Google + posts have began to outperform the original content. The new icon personalizes the search results to those within the user’s network that includes even the content shared privately.
The results does not show anything related to Facebook or Twiiter and this helps Google+ to promote their social network.Regarding this Amit Singhal said “Facebook and Twitter and other services, basically, their terms of service don’t allow us to crawl them deeply and store things. Google+ is the only [network] that provides such a persistent service. Of course, going forward, if others were willing to change, we’d look at designing things to see how it would work.”
Check out this video to know more about Search, plus Your World
Google+ Brand Pages Showing in Search Results
Out of world’s top 100 brands,77 have Google+ brand page.According to Bright Edge there has been a 50 percent increase in the number of fans adding their favorite brands to their circles and this amounts to 222,000 fans.
There are 300 million fans for the same brand on Facebook compared to 148,000 on Google +. Brands like IBM,Vodafone and Google have a Google+ page but not an official Facebook page.
The social and search channel gap in Google is closing up as Google is embedding popular product with it’s dominant search marketing position. The brands need to address both channels and it’s now their choice to extend their social presence from Facebook to Google+.
Brands are now offering incentives to include one of their pages as part of their search and social strategy such as the inclusion of Google+ pages in primary search results.There has also been a speculation around this move that it could lead google to anti trust woes.
Including Google+ pages in the search results is a smart move by Google and a recent survey found that Google,Yahoo contributes 34 percent of Facebook fan page referrals.A few questions like whether this could abuse Google’s dominant position in the market if it still contributes further remains to seen.
Author Stats added to Webmaster Tools
A new report named “Author Stats” has been introduced by Google recently. Google search results page will contain how often your page is showing up and this will be available under section called “labs” in Webmaster tools. When the content is associated with the Google,the impressions and clicks of the stories will be shown.
In case if you find any issues,you can mail them at authorship-pilot@google.com. More by link has also been added in the search results by Google
New Shiny API in Google Analytics
New features have been unrolling in Google Analytics since August when version 3 was launched.Google Analytics was in need of a new API and now developers have delivered it.
Data Export API has now been replaced by Google Analytics Core Reporting API which is right now the hot cake for Google Analytics Developers. The current Analytics API is both the continuation of the previous API and not to mention the Javascript Client Library which is currently in Alpha.
The two versions that are currently available in Core Reporting API are Version 2.4 and Version 3.0. The latter version contains new libraries for languages like PHP, Ruby and Python whereas former version is legacy release to maintain compatibility with the previous versions.
Significant changes are available in version 3.0 PAPI starting with authentication through the OAuth 2.0 format, but also in the use of JSON(Javascript for Object Notation) format for data output and absolutely no backwards compatibility with the previous version 2.3. The API team recommends the developers to migrate to 3.0 version.
If custom apps or interfaces are developed using 2.3 API,it needs to be updated within 6 months. Data Export API,XML requests and configuration will not be available at that time.
JSON(Javascript Object Notation) will be replacing XML as the preferred format for returning data.The new features will continue to roll out in 2012 as announced by Google and developers will be working on the API to make the new features more accessible.
Schemer Project and Activity Finder launched by Google
Content sharing tool has been introduced by Google which helps about finding new things in the real world.The new project allows the visitors to share,create and track progress for goals, activities and adventures.
Google has launched the project on a invite only basis and it would be a real world activity sharing site. Check this introduction part in Schemer Google+ page.
Whether it’s exploring a new city, checking out a friend’s movie recommendations, or just finding new activities for your weekends, Schemer lets you discover new things to do, share schemes with friends, and make the most of your day.
Even though a invite is needed,Google provided links will get you into Schemer.Search for the activities based on keywords, interest,location or category.Check out recent and popular posts.
You can mark the schemes you have done,track the schemes and even share your plans.Within a few clicks you can able create,label and describe the scheme of your own
You can also hare the content via Google + or through mail.You can also connect with other schemers via Google +
Graphing Capabilities added to Google Search Results
Google search bar has now turned into a graphing calculator. When a mathematical function has been entered on Google,the search result will now contain an interactive graph of the of the function that is entered into the search bar.
Everything from a single geometric function such as sin(x) and wild set of equations can be entered in the search bar. More than one equation can be graphed at once.
It also allows the searcher to pan around on, zoom in , zoom out and gets point-by-point information from the graph.Both mathematical symbols and standard language are accepted. According to Google blog “Google graph technology is capable of mapping out of trigonometric, exponential, logarithmic and their compositions”.
Google has been working on many different things that really pulls people in.High school students would love this new feature from Google to solve their mathematical questions. What do you think of this new feature from Google?
44 percent of Advertising Market owned by Google
In the last five years,the Internet ad market of the of Google have risen almost 10 percent from 44.1 percent in 2010 making it the leader of online advertising. In the global search market Google has been dominating with 85 percent and their competitors(Yahoo,Microsoft and AOL) have slipped nearly to 13.8 percent according to the survey from ZenithOptimedia.
Market share of Portals
Their acquisitions DoubleClick and YouTube had also played important role in Google’s market share. From 0.6 percent in 2006 and 3.1 percent in 2010, market share of Facebook has also grown considerably and they will surpass Microsoft by the end of the year.
Atleast till the end of year 2014 there will be sustained growth in global ad spend predicted by ZenithOptiMedia. They have also predicted that between the years 2011 and 2014, 58 percentage of ad revenue will come from emerging markets such as China,Russia and Indonesia.
Paid Search accounts for almost half of the adspend in the internet advertising segment at 15.7 percent a year and move to mobile where costs are lower will have some impact on the growth. Display will continue to trail the paid search by 2014,taking 22.6 and 25.6 respectively.
10 developing markets will contribute to 48 percent of global ad expenditure over the next three years with Brazil,Russia, India an China contributing 33 percent. For the total ad spend, China and Brazil are the only two developing countries in the list.
Bug in Adwords Keyword Tool acknowledged by Google
Users of the Google adwords tool found something peculiar in the recent days. When exact match search was done on certain terms it reported zero. This would have confused many users of the Google adwords tool. Google spokesperson confirms that it’s a bug.
The spokeperson in a statement said that “We’re aware of a potential issue that is affecting the keyword tool in AdWords, and are working hard to fix it”.
The problem has also been reported in Google Adwords help forum as early as November 23.There has not been any clear information on the terms which are affected and which are not as both global as well as local volume are currently showing as zero.
End of Yahoo Site Explorer and What are the Alternatives
SEO’s and Online Markets will be searching where to go now for free access of invaluable information which yahoo site explorer provided over the past 6 years. There is no longer free alternative and the companies that sell information as part of the marketing tool platforms will be in absolute joy.
Competitor Analysis of sites has also been lost as Yahoo site Explorer will be restricted to sites you own. If Bing wants more people to use their tool instead of Google, they need to include competitor data access which Yahoo site Explorer showed.
It was in the year 2005, Yahoo Site Explorer was launched and lots of marketers were happy at the fall conferences that year. At that Google Webmaster Central was not launched and Site Explorer was the only tool found through paid analytics at the time
A lot of people would be looking for alternatives and in fact people were surprised about the announcement of the merger. Right now there are no tools available for free that covers everything provided by Yahoo Site Explorer. There are few tools available that can give people with fewer funds to start with.
Open Site Explorer from SEOMoz offers the same information but Pro membership is needed for accessing all the features. For people with only five websites or less, monthly fees start at $99. But you get a lot more than link information for that fee.
With the help of SEO Book and SEO for Firefox browser plugin you can get the individual numbers at the top or side of any page. It is free but time consuming. Yahoo site Explorer missed but lets wait and watch if it smart enough to attract all the people.