Google+ : Follow The Links
In late June 2011, Google announced their latest plans for a social media network with the launch of Google + (also called “Google Plus”). Many are asking if Google has the ability to take on a social media giant like Facebook. We see the motivation behind this launch in a different light.
This is not Google’s first foray into the social media space. Their past efforts with “Buzz” and Google Wave were not successful, and one wonders why they continue trying. In fact, many so called “experts” are hinting that if Google fails in their social media efforts, it may mark the beginning of the end for Google. We just don’t see this happening.
The Online Goliaths
Google’s domination of search is well documented and they currently control about 65% of the search marketing space. Facebook, on the other hand, surpassed Google as the most visited website in the U.S. in early 2010, and has not looked back. In spite of this, Google still owns the “Search” world where most online conversions take place. Facebook, on the other hand, owns the “Friends” world, where fewer online transactions happen.
Recent revenue estimates indicate that with Search and Social combined, Google had over four times the projected revenues of the social networks; Facebook, Twitter and Groupon – combined. This alone makes one wonder why Google would be working so hard at capturing a share of the Social Media space. The return on investment for Google to capture 23% of the social media world seems like small potatoes for Google. It just doesn’t make sense for the “experts” to say that “overtaking Facebook” is Google’s primary objective here.
What is Google’s Motivation?
Google is likely looking at social media circles in order to keep up to date with conversations taking place in the Social Media world, and most likely so that they can continue to track conversations related to current topics, as well as maintain visibility into who the experts (influencers) are in the social media circles. Social media has become more and more about current topics, social influence and subject matter experts, and Google seems to understand this well.
How Does Google Measure Relevant Content?
Historically, Google has followed links and content in order to locate and measure the most relevant content and subjects discussed today. They also look at the credibility of links connecting to that content (Page Rank) in order to identify content experts and influencers.
How Social Media Has Impacted Google
In order for search to work, Google must be able to freely access all web content and links, including social media. Unfortunately, for Google, most social media sites have now implemented tighter security measures due to privacy concerns. These types of security measures ends up placing Google outside of the social media fortress, with no way to get inside and “crawl” the content, links and influencers. (Google has no ability to crawl a password protected web site without the permission of the site).
The Social Media Fortress
Without access to password protected social media sites, Google has been forced to reinvent itself and do one of two things: the first being to develop long lasting relationships with social media networks like Facebook (which they have had little success doing); or secondly, to create their own social media network and drive more traffic to it via Google applications.
Google’s Social Media Solution
Google has apparently decided to create their own social media network through with latest initiative, Google +. With Google+, Google has a social network that they can measure topic relevance and influencers in order identify links to the most socially relevant content online. For Google, this initiative seems to be more about improving their search algorithm, and less about the dominance of Social Media. We’ll see how this works for them in the weeks and months to follow.
Mobile Search Becomes More Localized
Most hand-held mobile device users realize how hard it is to search the internet. It’s slow and difficult depending on how many characters you need to use to find what you’re looking for. Yesterday, Google announced a search feature for U.S. mobile device users that will make searches with Google much easier on Android powered devices or iPhones.
With this feature, once you start typing a search term on your mobile device, Google will provide a list of search suggestions that match your entry. Most importantly, these search suggestions will be based on your location. This feature will reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to submit a search to get relevant search results. What they are basically doing is providing optimized search suggestions using your location.
For search marketers that rely on search traffic this is actually a very interesting announcement for a couple of reasons. For one, Google is basically adopting and implementing a business rule that assumes that Google searches on a Android powered device or iPhone should be more focused toward local listings.
Secondly, the impact to search rankings is an unknown at this point if your business is dependent on nationwide search traffic. The question is, how will these search suggestions impact search traffic to your web site? Obviously localized search suggestions will take precedence, but will your listing drop down in the rankings if you are not a local business or organization.
Using the example in the Google Mobile Blog post about this feature, let’s say that you are a museum in Boston, but the search takes place in San Francisco. If the Google search suggestion feature is emphasizing local search phrases for museums in San Francisco, will it still be easy to find your museum if you’re located in Boston?
It may turn out that localized mobile search has no major impact to national search listings, but it’s still too early to tell. This is obviously something that should be monitored and considered when discussing search engine optimization (SEO) strategies for your company or organization in the near term.
Google Updates Personalized Search
Without much fanfare, on December 4th 2009 Google announced an update to Google Personalized Search. Although this didn’t attract much attention in the business world, it’s an important update that web site owners should be aware of. It’s a further indication of the direction that Google is moving in terms of their online search tools.
What is Personalized Search?
Google Personalized Search was first launched in 2005 (announcement). With Personalized Search, Google search results are more personalized to your specific interests, based on your prior search history. In effect, web sites that you had visited in the past, through a Google search, will show up higher in the rankings for a related search.
Prior to the latest update, personalized search was only available to those that were signed into their Google account. With the most recent update though, everyone’s Google search results will be personalized by default, although you can opt-out of this feature.
How Does Personalized Search Work?
Lets say that you’ve used Google Search in the past to find recipes for dinner. You’ve been able to find some great recipes on much lower ranked web sites, but now you can’t remember what they were. You do a Google Search, and lo and behold, the web sites that you had previously found now show up toward the top of the search results page. In essence, the search results page has been personalized based on your search history and location.
Each and every time that you do an online search with Google, your search keywords and the links that you clicked on are saved as your search history. Future searches on Google will refer to your search history so that your search results are more personalized to your interests.
How Does This Impact Web Site Owners?
Although Personalized Search is great for online users, this is not always the case for web site owners. The reason for this is that web sites are now ranked differently per each person. For example, your web site may show up at #1 for one person, but at #11 for a different person. The search listings will now be dependent on search history, location and more for ALL Google searches.
There’s not a great deal known in terms of what impact the Personalized Search update will have. Some of the early testing done does not show much difference yet. But the cookie that stores search history can keep up to 180 days of data, and so it may take more time to find out what the impact of this will be.
What Should Be Done Next?
In the meantime, there are some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) steps you can take to ensure that your web site is optimized as much as possible. These are a few of the best practices that you can do at this point in time. These are:
- Ensure that your web site is using page titles that identify the overall topic or content of each web page. Use as few words as possible, but make sure that they are relevant to each web page.
- Make sure that you are using the description meta tag. The meta description tag does not have an impact on your page ranking, but it does make a difference in terms of getting people to click on your listing in the search engine results page. Basically you want people to click on your listing because it will tell Google that your listing is more relevant than the others for that search term. This description should contain a description of features and benefits relevant to the page content.
- If you rely on local business, make sure that your web page includes information about your location. This can be something as simple as a brief mention of “Serving the city of…” in the page footer.
- If you don’t have a Social Media Marketing strategy in place, now would be a great time to get started. Make sure that your have at least a Facebook page for your company. Most importantly though, start creating a strategy to tap into the social networking world.
In addition to the steps above, you’ll want to have an SEO expert review your web site to make sure that your web site architecture, site maps, and other SEO related elements are in place and working correctly.
If you are a web site owner, keep a close eye on future changes to Google Personalized Search. This feature will likely change more often in the future and you’ll want to make sure that your web site is optimized and ranking as high as possible. You don’t want your web site to get lost in the Google Personalized Search results page shuffle.
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