Future Searches

Use Social Media to appear in Real-Time Search

Google and Bing revealed their integration to real-time search and social media by announcing their agreements with Twitter during the Web 2.0 Summit on October 21. Google is aiming to give a better real-time search experience by including real-time Twitter updates in their search results hence users will be able to learn what others are saying about what they’ve been searching for under the same roof. Consider you perform a search about “x brand of freezer”. You will not only see relevant search results but also public opinion about your topic that will give you quick and better understanding about your query.

On the other side, Bing didn’t go far beyond than developing a Bing Twitter search facility similar to the other Twitter search engines in the market. Bing’s new Twitter search feature is currently available in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Indonesia, Ireland, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Arabia, South Africa, and the United States. Those guys are aware of the power of real-time web and took their step in to the social media not later that Google.

What Would You Ask to Google CEO Eric Schmidt?

Last week, I read Michael Arrington’s interesting interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt on TechCrunch regarding the future of search. The questions were simple and cool. The answers were inspiring. I just can’t wait to read the rest of the interview.

So, what people on internet business would ask or tell to Eric Schmidt regarding Google and internet if they are given a chance to do so. If you have questions or anything to say, write them down here now.  I will bring all comments together and maybe we might get the answers of our common interview later.

First question is coming from me: What do you think about the future of SEO?

Come on, say your word.

Global Search Market is Growing

According to comScore, 113 billion searches were conducted in July 2009 globally.

Google sites had 58 percent increase compared to last year and ranked as the leaders within search engines in global search market with 76.7 billion searches conducted and 67.5 percent market share. Google sites are followed by Yahoo sites with 8.9 billion searches and 7.8 percent market share. Yahoo had just 2 percent increase compared to last year and closely followed by Chinese search engine Baidu sites with 8 billion searches 7.0 percent share. Microsoft sites ranked forth worldwide with a 41 percent increase compared to last years data which seems promising for next year.

The overall July 2009 data represents a 41-percent increase versus July 2008 in global search market that is a positive indicator for future search marketing opportunities and e-business.

Rank # 1 for Rising Search Terms

Last week, on 25th of June I went to Facebook and saw one of my friends flash post about Michael Jackson’s cardiac arrest. What a shock! As a fan of M.J. since I was a teenager, I felt so sad and hoped he was happy in his last minutes.

Anyway, I made a search and found out there were not many posts yet on the internet, especially in Google.com.tr news page. There was only one news about Michael Jackson’s death so I thought it is a good time to implement some tests on line.

I create a post on my Turkish bookmarking site Linkopedi and avoid using the main keyword for M.J. death “Michael Jackson öldü” and used synonyms instead. Next day, my post ranked #1 for “Michael Jackson vefat etti” term in Google.com.tr, which is another synonym of “Michael Jackson öldü”, although I never used that “exact match” in my post but used other synonyms instead. I guess if I have used both terms in my post and used the most common terms “Michael Jackson öldü” in my title, I would have traffic coming from the main keyword and synonyms.

No More Page Rank Sculpting with “nofollow” Attribute

Since Matt Cutts from Google throw a bombshell in SMX advanced meeting in 3th of June about Page Rank Sculpting, every search marketing blog is discussing the same issue. Is it really like “nofollow” attribute no longer passes more juice to followed links or not and what changes shall SEO‘s do in that case? First of all lets have a look at what page rank sculpting is all about.

What is page rank sculpting?

Every page has a page rank value, that is a numerical weighting that it passes in to the links allocated in it. Page Rank sculpting occurs when we use “nofollow” attribute in unimportant links to prevent passing page rank values so that we pass that left over weight in to followed links to increase the page rank of those links.

According to Google’s change, regardless of  “nofollow” attribute, Google determines the Page Rank  it passes along  links according to the number of links on a web page. That is using “nofollow” no longer generates more page rank for the followed links. Here are some of Matt Cutts goodies:

Google Wave: How It Can Help Online Marketing and Communication

Google unveiled Google Wave, a communication and collaboration tool in Google I/O conference last week. Since I was not there I searched on the internet and found out what Google Wave is all about. First of all, it is something we all need to wait and experience to understand how much difference it can make in our business and daily communication needs. It seems to be a combination of email, instant messaging and micro-blogging all under the same interface. There are some terminologies which we all will become familiar with as we use Google Wave. Ok, lets have a look at it.

Above is a screenshot of how Google Wave looks like. On the left, there is your Google Wave folders and your Google contact list with images of your contacts. There is Google wave inbox in the middle of screen where you can click on any wave to open a pane for that wave on the right side of the screen. There users can see everything about that wave, respond to waves, add more people just by simply dragging pictures of people in their contact list in to the wave,  rewind back and see how that wave evolved over time, change the contents in a wave or see the changes made by other users in a wave.

More Traffic, Revenue and Value by SEO

Anyone who has a website or a blog can make money from these assets by letting ad spaces to advertisers online or joining to affiliate partner networks. But owning a website is not enough by it’s own, there should be a good traffic coming to your website and you should prove your statistics to your advertisers in order to request an advertising fee unless you own a very well-known website with a high page rank etc. If you join to an affiliated network then you should have a good traffic to see leads and convertions.

I’ve just found out that there is a WordPress plugin which shows your Google statictics as unique number of visitors called Google Analyticator. I guess there are several other tools free to use but what if you are not happy with your number of visitors?

Improve your website traffic with SEO

The best thing to do is increasing your natural traffic by Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a great way to drive visitors from search engines, increase the value of your website in figures and to generate sales and income through your website. Stick on on-page SEO practices for the beginning and once you are happy with it, go for off-page SEO tactics like link building and spend at least an hour everyday by visiting forums, micro-blogging sites and relevant websites to improve your visibility. It is not the most joyful thing to do but it is fruitful at the end.

Google Advanced Search Experience

Google launched new search options at it’s Searchology event held at its Mountain View headquarters to improve search experience of users.

New Google Search Options are giving an advanced search experience with easy to use of navigation. From now on, users will be able to refine their search results deeper according to time, relevance, reviews, timeline and many more.

I especially find it very useful to refine search results only for the last 24 hours which gives fresh content for your topic and I agree with Google’s product manager Kavi Goel that this is a  “step toward making the whole internet smarter.”

Google search option Wonder Wheel

Another fantastic feature is Wonder Wheel. When you make a search, it puts your keyword in to the center of the wheel and gives you related search terms. You go deeper and deeper as you click on related terms covering your main search term.

New search features gives an insight to SEO’s for the future strategies. Similar to blended search, new search options welcomes proactive and committing websites in the new search universe.

How do you think new search features will affect SEO practices?

Effects of Economy Breakdown in Search Engines

Recession showed impacts on search engine companies as well. Here is how Google and Yahoo performed in this tough times.

Google revenue declined from one quarter to the next

Internet giant Google reported a 9.2 percent rise in quarterly net profit of 1.42 billion dollars. The figure is up six percent from the same quarter a year ago which was 1.31 billion dollars in the same quarter but down three percent compared with the fourth quarter of last year. Google said the revenue declined for the first time ever in consecutive quarters.

“Google had a good quarter given the depth of the recession — while revenues were down quarter over quarter, they grew six percent year over year thanks to continued strong query growth,” chief executive Eric Schmidt said.
According to new chief financial officer Patrick Pichette, Google was laying off 200 sales and marketing employees.

Yahoo has dramatical net income plunge

At the same time, Yahoo reported a 78% decline in net income for the first quarter 2009 and plans to cut its workforce by 5%.

Drive Traffic to Websites by Current Search Trends

If you have a website or blog, I know that you want to drive big traffic and bring leads, generate some ad revenue or just increase your Page Rank and websites’ value.

One way to drive traffic to your website is following trends and generating posts related with search phrases. There are several ways you can monitor real-time (delays are always possible) search trends such as Google Trends, Twitter and Yahoo Buzz.

Google Trends

Google trends give you approximate popular search patterns. You can see a list of most searched 100 queries. It gives search volume index for each pattern, news articles, blog posts, related searches, peak times and locations. I believe it gives great insight for popular search trends as majority of people use Google for search.

Trend topics by Twitter

Twitter is a “a real-time short messaging service” and has recently added search and trend topics features to users homepages. It gives top-ten popular tweet topics and a great global insight as they say:

“As public tweets fly in from around the globe, we analyze them to detect when certain words or phrases occur with higher frequency. These trending phrases are surfaced in the Twitter home page just under the new search box and they’re updated throughout the day.”