Search Engine Optimization Guru All Over

6 Local SEO Stats Every Online Marketer Needs To Know

2015-08-20T23:31:00.000-07:00

Trying to make the case for local search engine optimization (SEO), or wondering how you can improve your existing efforts? Columnist Jayson DeMers has you covered.

If you own a local business, you already know how important it is to rank in local search results. Now that the internet has become the primary source consumers turn to for local business information, not showing up in local search is tantamount to professional suicide.

This article will evaluate six important local SEO statistics that should shape your priorities when it comes to local search. For each statistic, I’ve also included an actionable step or steps you can take, as well as resources for further investigation.

1. Local Searches Lead 50% Of Mobile Visitors To Visit Stores Within One Day

Google’s research into local search behavior reveals that local searchers are poised to take action. According to their findings, “50% of consumers who conducted a local search on their smartphone visited a store within a day, and 34% who searched on computer/tablet did the same.” This means ranking in local search has a direct impact on in-store traffic.

Here are a few tips to make sure you’re ranking for local search terms:

Get your business listed on Google My Business, and make sure your profile is complete.
Make sure your NAP (name, address, phone number) is consistent across all channels. This includes your website, social media profiles, review sites and directory listings.
Use local business schema markup so Google can identify and show your physical location.
Use local keywords in your URLs, heading tags, title tags and content, where appropriate.

2. More Than 60% Of Consumers Have Used Local Information In Ads

In the same study referenced above, Google found that consumers have a clear preference when it comes to having ads customized to their surroundings. They found that:

67% of smartphone users want ads customized via city and ZIP code, and 61% want ads customized to their immediate surroundings.
61% use the address or phone number in the ad.
68% use the “Get Directions” or “Call” buttons.

When targeting your ads for local consumers, be sure to target your ads by location and to use location extensions. AdWords pulls your contact information from your Google My Business settings, so make sure it’s set up the way you want it to appear in your ads.

3. 88% Of Consumers Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations

Local businesses should be aware of the importance of positive online reviews, as highlighted in this stat from BrightLocal’s 2014 Local Consumer Review Survey. Increasingly, consumers are turning to Google to get recommendations and referrals for local businesses.

Some of the top review sites I recommend for local businesses include:

A great place to start when deciding where to list your business is to simply search for your business name, as well as for keywords you think your prospects may be searching for. See which review sites are displayed most prominently for these searches, and get to work.

4. Business Address/Location Is The Primary Piece Of Information Sought By Local Searchers

We’ve already talked about the importance of using local information in your ads; however, it’s just as important to make sure you’re including key contact and location info on your website and social media profiles.

According to research by comScore, Neustar Localeze and agency 15 Miles, address and location are the primary pieces of information sought by local searchers. Here are some of the other types of info searchers are looking for:

Businesses by category (In other words, searchers are looking for a particular type of business but haven’t yet decided which one to patronize.)
Phone number
Products or services (Again, they don’t have a particular business in mind, they’re searching for a specific product or service.)
Hours of operation
Driving directions
Coupons and special offers
Ratings and reviews

Given the desires of local searchers, it’s important to keep your mobile content concise and actionable. Don’t overwhelm your mobile visitors with copious amounts of information; instead, clearly provide the basic info outlined above, and provide links to additional content as needed.

5. 18% Of Local Mobile Searches Lead To A Sale Within One Day

We already talked about how local searchers are more likely to visit a store, but Google found that these customers are likely to actually make a purchase, as well. They also found that one in three smartphone searches occurred immediately before a consumer visited a store and that 15% of in-store activity involved product or price comparison searches.

In other words, capturing the local search market means first dibs for consumers who are in the final stages of the buying cycle, wallets out, ready to buy. Try enticing these consumers to spend money in your store through the use of mobile coupon campaigns.

Bonus Stat: Mobile phones have the highest conversion rate compared to other devices.

6. 50% Of Mobile Users Prefer A Mobile Browser To A Mobile App

There has been a lot of talk about mobile optimization, mobile apps and responsive design since Google’s move to include mobile-friendliness as a significant ranking factor for its mobile search results. However, brand-new research from BrightLocal reveals that half of mobile users prefer using a mobile internet browser to mobile maps (40%) and mobile apps (only 10%).

If you haven’t already optimized your site for mobile, you may have seen a significant drop in your search rankings and traffic since April 21, 2015 (the launch date of Google’s Mobilegeddon algorithm update). If you’re not sure if your site is mobile-friendly, try Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to be sure.

Bonus Stat: According to the BrightLocal study, 38% of consumers are impressed when a local business has a mobile-optimized site.

Final Thoughts

The importance of ranking in local search is undeniable. As we’ve already seen, local searches lead to in-store visits and sales. Translation: High local search rankings = increased traffic and revenue.

Ensure your site and content are optimized for local SEO, and get your business listed on local review sites. Include contact info in a prominent location on your website and social media profiles, and use location extensions for paid ads. Finally, make sure your site is optimized for viewing on mobile browsers.

Did any of the stats above surprise you? Why or why not?

Did Hummingbird Just Kill Your Local SEO?

2013-10-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

That said, Google’s Hummingbird algorithm, along with all of the other awesome updates Google has made over the past year, has forced me to reevaluate how I approach a local SEO campaign.

First, some background on Hummingbird: Google wants to do better at matching queries to results, particularly as voice search becomes more popular and people start asking their phones complex questions instead of typing simple searches. According to Danny Sullivan:

Google said that Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words.

Danny provides a great local search example to illustrate the change:

“What’s the closest place to buy the iPhone 5s to my home?” A traditional search engine might focus on finding matches for words — finding a page that says “buy” and “iPhone 5s,” for example.

Hummingbird should better focus on the meaning behind the words. It may better understand the actual location of your home, if you’ve shared that with Google. It might understand that “place” means you want a brick-and-mortar store. It might get that “iPhone 5s” is a particular type of electronic device carried by certain stores. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages with matching words.

So how do you apply this to your Local SEO strategy?

Invest In FAQ Content

The FAQ has been the go-to SEO strategy since time began (circa 1998). Over time, your sales staff probably answers the same set of questions from potential customers over and over again. These are the same queries that customers type (and now speak) into search engines. By adding the most popular questions to your site, either in a dedicated FAQ section or on a blog, you now are more eligible to rank for these queries.

“But wait,” you say, “most of these types of queries are not necessarily local, right?” That’s true. There’s nothing inherently local about the phrase, “how to get rid of mold spots on ceiling,” and the current Google SERP for that query shows a lot of national DIY site results.

But if you think about Hummingbird’s goal to “focus on the meaning behind the words,” you’ll see that sooner or later, Google is going to start to put the fact that you have mold spots on your ceiling together with the idea that you might want to remove those spots and that’s where local businesses that target these queries can gain an unfair advantage over the eHows and DIY.coms of the world.

Invest In Content That Provides Unique Information (Pro Tip: Use Data)

The problem with the FAQ strategy mentioned above is that any mold-removal company can throw up an FAQ that targets a bunch of juicy queries. So you’ve got to go the extra mile and start putting up content that both answers questions and is not easily duplicated by that low-brow SEO your competition is using.

Even when you think you have nothing to say, you can still use your proprietary business data to come up with interesting stuff. For example, if you are targeting people in the market for body sculpting, how about looking at all of the data you have on your patients and doing a post like How Long Does Vaser Lipo Last?

Invest In “Fresh” Content For Your Target Service Locations

Like everything else in local, this is easy to say and hard to do. But I have seen no better tactic for improving local rankings (particularly for service areas where a business has no physical locations) than regularly updating a site with content relevant to those service areas. And there are plenty of ways to skin this cat. You could:

Make a cool local UGC map like this Chicago Bike Accident Map.
Add customer reviews and and tweet-like staff activity updates to relevant location pages.
Simply just allow user comments on your pages, like this shameless experiment.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Hey Andrew, that’s a lot of text to wade through just to learn that I have to create better content.” Truth be told, Hummingbird hasn’t changed Local SEO much (yet), except perhaps by accident.

You still need to fix your citations, get links, get reviews, build “unstructured” citations and make your site accessible. Hummingbird just gives us content-crazy SEOs yet another excuse to push businesses to invest in making their sites better.

And if that’s not good enough insider info for you, and you’re desperate for some cutting edge Google Local SERP news, I recommend you peruse Nyagoslav Zhekov’s post on how Google may have just decoupled local and “pure” organic results and, in the process, shifted Local SEO’s emphasis back to citation building.

Sometimes, Local SEO truly is for the birds.

Google’s Matt Cutts: More Pages Does Not Equal Higher Rankings

2013-10-28T21:37:00.005-07:00

In a new video released today by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, we learn that the more pages a web site has, does not necessarily mean you will have better rankings.

Matt Cutts said, “I wouldn’t assume that just because you have a large number of indexed pages that you automatically get a high-ranking. That’s not the case.”

He goes on to explain that the more pages you have, the more chances you have to rank for different keywords. Plus, the more pages you have, the more likely you have more overall links and PageRank, which do directly impact your rankings. But the number of pages on a specific site, does not have a direct ranking benefit.

Matt said it at the end again, “just having a number of pages doesn’t give you a boost.”

Study: Google Adds 1,200 Search Sites & 750 ISP Client Networks In Less Than A Year

2013-10-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

A study published by researchers at the University of Southern California unintentionally discovered Google has dramatically increased the number of sites and ISPs it uses to serve client queries.

According to the findings, between October 2012 and July 2013, Google increased the number of locations serving its search infrastructure from less than 200 to more than 1,400, as well as growing the number of ISPs it uses from a little over 100 to more than 850.

From the study:

Most of this expansion reflects Google utilizing client networks (such as Time Warner Cable, for example) that it already relied on for hosting content like videos on YouTube, and reusing them to relay – and speed up – user requests and responses for search and ads.

“Google already delivered YouTube videos from within these client networks,” said the study’s lead author and USC PhD student Matt Calder, “But they’ve abruptly expanded the way they use the networks, turning their content-hosting infrastructure into a search infrastructure as well.”

After creating a way to track and map Google’s servers, the USC research team’s original intention was to study the relationship between Google’s server locations and its clients. The researchers claim they “just happened” to be researching Google’s search infrastructure when the company made its move to expand its search sites in ten months time.

The study was presented last week at the SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference in Spain. The research team behind the findings said Google’s strategy has a number of benefits, “Users have a better web browsing experience, ISPs lower their operational costs by keeping more traffic local, and Google is able to deliver its content to Web users quicker.”

Facebook Offers A Peek At How Graph Search For Status Updates Works

2013-10-25T22:03:00.000-07:00

It’s been less than a month since Facebook expanded Graph Search to include status updates and posts, and the feature still isn’t available to all users.

Nonetheless, Facebook search engineer Ashoat Tevosyan shared an “under the hood” look at how it works — and why it took so long to become reality.

There’s nothing incredibly newsy in the post, but it’s educational from a search perspective. Here’s a bullet list of facts and figures from the post:

Post search has been two years in the making, and began as a hackathon project when Tevosyan was still an intern
There are a billion posts every day on Facebook, and the posts index currently has more than a trillion posts
Post data such as time, location and tags are stored differently in posts, check-ins and photos — making the search project more challenging
At 700 terabytes, the posts index is the biggest of all Facebook search indexes
Graph Search currently uses more than 100 ranking features to figure out the best match when doing post searches

There’s more in the full article that might interest you, and it’s not incredibly technical (which is good for readers like me!). Unfortunately, there’s no word on how the rollout is progressing.

6 Benefits of Using Infographics

2013-10-24T23:40:00.001-07:00

As someone who is constantly surfing the web, either for work or just because I’m an addict, I’ve become a big fan of infographics. And, I’m far from the only person who’s found infographics to be an educational, entertaining, and useful tool. Within the last decade infographics have become an increasing trend. In fact, from 2010 to 2012, infographic search volumes have increased over 800%. Suffice it to say, that’s an outstanding trend. But, what exactly are infographics and should you use them?

For the uninitiated, infographics “are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly”. In other words, an infographic collects data, organizes it, and turns this information into an easy to understand visual, such as a chart or map. So, why and how can these graphs be beneficial?

Studies have found that 90 percent of the information that we remember is based on visual impact. Include that tidbit with the fact that we live in an age where 1.5 billion pieces of content, 140 million tweets, and 2 million videos are created on a daily basis, and you can easily understand why a simple visual aid can make your brand stand out.

If you’re still on the fence regarding infographics, here are six other benefits of the popular resource.

Infographics are more eye-catching than printed words, since they usually combine images, colors, movement, and content that naturally draw the eye.

Since most of us have increasingly shorter attention spans, we tend to “scan” material as opposed to actually reading text. Furthermore, we tend to remember information that we’ve seen more so than read.

Infographics are extremely shareable for use around the web. For example, an infographic published on a WordPress blog or website usually provides an embed code. This code allows an automatic link from the original site to yours. They are also easily shared on social networks and have a better chance of becoming viral compared to ordinary text.

Infographics can be used to reinforce a brand, simply because they are so visually appealing. If you design an infographic with consistent colors, shapes, and messages, along with your logo, you’ll have an effective means of “Brand Awareness”.

A well designed and aesthetically pleasing infographic will drive people to your site since they are more likely to “share” and “click” on it. Also, this can help with Google’s “Page Rank” algorithm, which is important for SEO.
Finally, infographics are a fun and engaging medium that can generate a unique connection with visitors to either your site or a location that has featured your infographic.

It’s not everyday that you can utilize something that is not only visually pleasing , but also has the capability to spread your brand as it goes viral throughout the internet. If you’re still looking for some other examples, along with tips on how to design and develop an effective infograph, we suggest this article from Forbes, along with this wonderful piece by Jayson DeMers, “The Definitive Guide to Writing and Promoting a Viral Infographic”.

Matt Cutts At Pubcon 2013: Moonshots, Machine Learning & The Future Of Google Search

2013-10-23T21:59:00.000-07:00

This morning, the head of Google’s webspam team Matt Cutts gave a keynote speech at Pubcon in Las Vegas. The keynote comes on the heels of a scathing day — 1 keynote from Jason Calacanis, who said that Google rules everything, that they were essentially evil. On Twitter yesterday, Matt asked if Jason wanted the polite response, or a thorough one. All of us here in attendance are hoping for “thorough.”

Matt starts with the state of the index talking about where will Google go in future.

He’s proud that Google as doubled down on ‘moonshot’ changes, specifically:

Knowledge Graph Google has been trying to understand entities — not just the searches. So essentially they are trying to learn about “things not strings.”

Voice Search

Conversational Search

Google Now Matt is proud that today, sometimes you don’t even have to search to find information you need.

Deep Learning Google is looking more into the relationships between words. Google will be able to read at a higher level and interpret the relationships between words. Works well with voice search when a user asks Google, “Who is the Prime Minister of Turkey?” then searches again for “How old is he?” and Google can reply with the previous context.

Core Quality Changes

Hummingbird This change targets better natural language translation. Search is more than just matching words — instead it’s looking at specific words that are more meaningful for intelligent scoring. For instance, a voice search for “what is the capital of Texas, my Dear” the “my Dear” isn’t that important — Hummingbird will be able to detect this. While Hummingbird affected 90% of queries, it was a very subtle change that most users didn’t recognize but will help users get more pertinent results.

Panda Softening This is something that Google has looked into to help bring some sites and content back.
Detecting/Boosting Authorities Not done by hand, but applies by topic areas. Webmasters can keep deepening their content on a topic to further their authoritativeness on a specific content area.
Smartphone Ranking Doesn’t have flash? won’t display a site that has flash to you then.

Webspam Changes

Penguin 2.0 & 2.1 Penguin 2.0 was released – not that intensive. Black hats said wasn’t big, so Google then released turned it up in 2.1. More changes will be continually coming, so buckle up.

Spammy Query Algorithms Items like porn and payday loans will be targeted for better results. Right now the SERPS aren’t great, but they will be working on it.

Advertorials/Native Advertising Google has cracked down on publishers selling ads that blended in as editorial with dofollow links.. You shouldn’t be paying for links that pass pagerank.

Spam Networks They’ve got a pretty good list, just working their way down them. Matt joked that he should talk a poll to determine who to axe next.

Communication

Google has done a great job of increasing the communication with webmasters, especially:

New videos for malware/hacking
Concrete examples in guidelines
>100 speaking events, Hangouts on Air, webmaster office hours
How search works website
Future of Search

Machine Learning Google’s goal is to provide the world information. The word “search engine” isn’t anywhere in their mission statement. They want to be able to give answers to specific queries.

Mobile Mobile is coming faster than anyone expected. 40% of YouTube videos are now served to mobile devices. If you haven’t thought about mobile, it’s time to start thinking about it.

Social/Identity/Authorship Matt starts with “Facebook did a great job of social and knowing who people are.” Then talks about the fact that signal is not just likes/+1s/Tweets but in the long terms; social signals are a sign of authority. You are someone worth listening to — search engines will think you are worth listening to as well.

Webspam Trends

Hacking Next 6 months – it’s going to look like we aren’t working on much. Now working on next generation of hacking. Queries like “buy viagra” still looks bad because people are breaking the laws.

Hot Topics Items like child porn, international issues and really nasty queries are being addressed.
No Toolbar PageRank scheduled for rest of year The pipeline for updating PageRank broke this year and PageRank stopped updating. Google realized that it wasn’t that bad and stopped updating as people seem to pay too much attention to the metric. It’s something they will reassess at a later time.

Advice

Mobile Get ready, you need a mobile plan.

Request Autocomplete New item in Chrome that allows users to auto-fill forms. Saves users time by using the standard to pull in all information and increase chance of conversions.

Ad-heavy pages above the fold Some tweaks are coming to “turn up” this algorithm. Users shouldn’t see a barrage of ads above the fold when they visit a site.

Tightening Authorship Matt mentions that a tightening of Authorship may provide better results. Google is looking for a 15% reduction to ensure that the quality of the authorship is still high and relevant.

Rich Snippets The ability to have and use rich snippets may be taken away for low quality sites in the coming months Smarter on JavaScript Google is now fetching, rendering and indexing items called by JavaScript. Google is getting smarter and understanding smarter libraries.

Now to the Q and A section:

Matt talks about +1′s specifically and that they are a short term signal, but very bullish on long term signal of authorship. Next Matt talks about Negative SEO. Worked on Negative SEO for years. With Penguin, it not only removes sites, but can actually have a negative effect on the site. Disavow tool announced last year, use as a last resort. Use Webmaster Tools, find links and disavow at link or domain level. Webmaster tools is now giving better backlinks, not just A-Z, so use Webmaster Tools to help identify, can see 100,000 links.

In response to Jason Calacanis’ claims from yesterday, Matt polls the crowd on whether or not to go into the matter. Crowd wants to hear the response. Matt talks about the initial version of Panda and whether or not they should have rolled out slowly. Matt says that this wouldn’t have been good and cites multiple articles showing the degrading quality of the search results. Google needed Panda. A Googler made a personal blocklist to block specific sites and nearly 200k users installed — people did not want these content farms.

In response to Jason’s claims that Google wasn’t a good partner, Matt talked about the fact that no companies have partnerships with Google. There are YouTube partnerships, not Google search partnerships. In aggregate, Mahalo simply wasn’t a quality site and they came to an impasse at a personal meeting. This wasn’t even a webspam issue, it was a quality issue and nobody received special treatment.

With the Mahalo issue behind, Matt talks about press releases. “If you are paying for PageRank, you probably aren’t doing something right.” Google has identified “a lot” of the top Press Release sites and ignores the links but doesn’t penalize those who are using them.

On infinite scrolling issues, Matt recommends using some type of paginated versions as a safety guard to index all content. On the growing size of the Google bar, Matt mentions that they are aware of the size and pixels being taken up by Google.

Majestic SEO Launches Search Explorer; SEO Link Tool Through Keyword Search

2013-10-23T02:46:00.001-07:00

Majestic SEO, a popular link explorer tool for SEOs and webmasters, announced the launch of Search Explorer.

Search Explorer is a search engine they designed to allow SEOs and webmasters to search by keyword or phrase, and the results would be ranked by Majestic SEO’s own linkage metrics. The purpose is to show which web sites rank the highest for a specific keyword based mostly on their own linkage data.

The rankings will be mostly based on Majestic SEO’s own “Flow Metrics” analysis of the links.

The announcement will officially be made at PubCon in Las Vegas tomorrow at 3pm local time.

Dixon Jones, the Marketing Director of Majestic SEO told me they do not have access to personalized data or full text caching for a page. Search Explorer does not license Yahoo Search data to bring in contextual text context to the mix, because linkage data, while very telling, doesn’t always tell you the complete story.

The new tool is expected to go live tomorrow around 3pm Las Vegas time, and we’ll add a link when that’s available.

Here is a screen shot of what Search Explorer may look like when it launches:

Google And SEO Communications

2013-10-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

There are many in the SEO community that get very frustrated with Google, and one of the reasons for this is simple: there is a communications gap.

In other words, people see that Google does a lot of communication but believe the search giant is deliberately vague and misleading about it. On the other hand, Google feels it is making every reasonable effort possible to be clear. Why does this gap exist? Let’s take a look.

Tactics Vs. Principles

The first part of this problem is that people are always asking Google about SEO tactics. Is this tactic ok? From Google’s perspective, some of these questions are like wolves in sheep’s clothing. To them, the flow of questions looks like this:

Is guest posting ok?
Is issuing press releases ok?
Is participating in DoFollow networks ok?
Is dropping links in thousands of forums ok?
Is taking candy from a baby ok?
Is writing great content ok?
Is corporate corruption ok?
Are links I received that I never asked for ok?
Is incest ok?
Is being interviewed by the New York Times ok?
Is getting fantastic links as a result of sharing my content on social media ok?

Clear Tactics Invite Spammers

Even the very first question in the above list is controversial. Illustrated another way, the person who asks, “Is guest posting is ok?” may actually be asking, “Is it ok if I spew out thousands of article spun blog posts to low-quality sites that have no editorial judgment at all?” This is what Google fears every time they hear a question about a potential SEO tactic. In short, Google hears something like this: “Do you mind If I spam you this way?”

In addition, Google’s challenge is that being clear on a tactical level about what is and is not ok sets them up for spammers to become more effective. Any time Google provides clear guidelines on what is an ok tactic, spammers will begin to devise ways to abuse it, either from a quality perspective or a volume perspective (or both). For example, for the guest posting question, the answer really should be yes, but the SEO industry has scores of businesses that have totally abused that concept.

We can illustrate the way Google looks at the danger of communicating precisely on SEO tactics as follows:

Truth be told, I hate equating spammers with Vikings due to my Norwegian heritage, but you get the idea. As a consequence, Google focuses on discussing principles that publishers should follow. What they have to say ends up looking a lot more like this:

Principles Vs. Tactics

Google focuses on principles, because many of the questions get into gray areas. To go back to the guest posting example: done the right way, it is perfectly fine. Focus on very high-quality sites with strong editorial policies, and give them great stuff. Then back that up with a strong social media push (yes, promote your guest posts in your own social media feeds; it’s a great tactic), and promote the content effectively so it accumulates its own links. Hence, any attribution link back to you can gain some weight. This is in stark contrast to the article-spinning example I used above.

There is another reason for Google to be a bit vague on SEO tactics. Google is happy to have spammers wasting time pursuing tactics that Google can easily detect and discount. If Google provides too much clarity, the spammers will move on from tactics that don’t work to try other tactics that may not be so easy for Google to detect. A world in which spammers can easily expose themselves is a good thing.

Strategies That Build Authority

Don’t expect Google’s approach regarding clarity on SEO tactics to change. The best thing to do is to understand the principles they are espousing, take them to heart, and then focus on producing great stuff and promoting your business (and its content) very effectively.

From an SEO perspective, instead of looking for a tactical way to pile up the links, focus instead on strategies that build your real-world authority that result in your getting recognized by other established authorities. That is what Google wants you to do, and chances are pretty good that it is the best link building strategy you can employ, anyway!

An Update For Google+ Page Owners And Managers

2013-10-13T22:17:00.001-07:00

11 November 2013 Google’s Terms of Service has been updated, they also added a new setting that gives you more control over where your Page’s name, photo and actions appear on Google and across the web. And below is a summary of information:

What’s happening?

Updated Google’s Terms of Service, including changes that apply to Google’s use of your Page’s name, photo and actions.

Google+ is designed to enable your content to be discovered, for example, by surfacing contextually relevant content or actions when they might be of interest to others. We call these recommendations ‘shared endorsements’. The changes to the Terms clarify details about how your Page’s name, photo and relevant activity may appear in shared endorsements. For example, if your Page publicly follows another Page, Google may surface this action with your Page’s name and photo when relevant and helpful to users, including in ads.

You’re in control of what you share on Google. Your Page sharing settings are not affected and, as always, if you’ve shared something with a limited audience, we respect that.

What can I do?

The new Shared Endorsements setting lets you control how your Page’s name, photo and the actions that you take (such as +1s, reviews that you write or comments that you post) may appear in advertising. This setting does not affect other places where your Page’s name and photo may appear. You can access this setting from your Page’s Dashboard and may change it at any time. If you turn the setting off, you may not be able to use certain features until you re-enable it.

The changes to the Terms will take effect as of 11 November 2013. If you do not take any action, the Shared Endorsements setting will be turned on.

To learn more about these updates for Google+ Pages, you can review the updated Google Terms of Service as well as the Google+ Help Centre.

Did Hummingbird Eat Link Building?

2013-10-11T22:28:00.001-07:00

Panda squashed bad content. Penguin froze low-quality links. And now, did Hummingbird eat link building?

Hummingbird wasn’t just another algorithm update. It was more a re-tooling, behind-the-scenes adjustment to make Google faster and smarter. And it most likely opens the door for a lot more change to come.

Let’s take a look at what Hummingbird means for the future of link building.
What Is Hummingbird To Online Marketers?

It’s a new engine, not a new paint job. It was in effect for 30 days, and we all missed it. It affects 90% of search results. And it’s designed to deliver more relevant results to every user, faster. Danny Sullivan summed it up best:

In general, Hummingbird — Google says — is a new engine built on both existing and new parts, organized in a way to especially serve the search demands of today, rather than one created for the needs of ten years ago, with the technologies back then.

Unlike other algorithm updates, Google didn’t seem to be chastising, correcting or directing the SEO community when they blogged about their 15th birthday the day Hummingbird was announced. Instead, the focus was on how they are making everybody’s life better with intuitive user experience improvements, including:

Updates to the Knowledge Graph (comparisons and filters)
Conversational, cross-platform search
Better mobile search experience
Hummingbird is all about the user.

Did Hummingbird Change SEO Forever?

Hummingbird is one more (big) step in the same direction Google has been heading since day one: Deliver the absolute best result to users, as fast as possible.

One of the goals of this update is to better understand the meaning behind words in search queries and deliver relevant results — for example, searching [pizza] at home might mean you’re looking for a recipe, but searching [pizza] on your phone most likely means you need the closest pizza joint, pronto. Conversational search came up too: “Having a ‘conversation’ with Google should also be more natural” (from Google’s birthday post).

That means the goal of every forward-thinking SEO and online marketer need not change. Mission critical is still the same: give your audience what they are looking for, quickly and easily.

Did Hummingbird Kill Link Building Once And For All?

No. Link building is alive and well. But the definition of link building sure does need to change. As Will Critchlow from Distilled says, “Link building is a terrible name for what we do.” And that is true for so many reasons.

Remember Panda, which was designed to penalize and discourage low-quality content? And Penguin, which put the ax to low-quality “link building”? Hummingbird wasn’t like those updates. As Danny noted in his detailed article, PageRank is still one of the 200 factors that Hummingbird uses to determine search results. But link building ain’t what it used to be.

Link building is dead. Long live link building.

How Does Hummingbird Impact Link Building?

Directly, it changes little. Indirectly, it changes everything.

SEOs used to be able to use links and other factors to trick Google into thinking that their search website was more authoritative and helpful than it actually was. Hummingbird once again makes the end user the absolute focus of search results. We can’t trick Google anymore! Building links to less-than-amazing content will fail. Google will notice high bounce rates, the lack of natural social sharing, and a variety of other quality signals no matter how many links you build — probably even faster with Hummingbird.

Everything we do should also focus on the end user. More than ever, link building needs to be focused on providing real (significant) value to users. Is our site worth the links we are trying to earn? Does blasting 1,000 potential link partners with a link request provide value? How can we leverage link building to provide more value at every step in the process?

Think quality content, intended to meet specific needs (“long tail”) and to be authoritatively long-lasting (“in-depth”).

Is Google+ More Important After Hummingbird?

The Google+ team said it themselves: “Google+: The social spine that improves the user experience across Google.” Now, their team said nothing about Google+ when discussing Hummingbird, but you can find the connection if you read between the lines. More Google+ is coming whether we like it or not — are you ready?

How Should Link Building Not Change After Hummingbird?

The greatest mistake you could make is seeing Hummingbird as a reason to make another “update” to your link building formulas. For example, maybe you have been trying to build links with this type of framework: 50% branded links, 30% partial match links, 20% exact match links. Now that Hummingbird happened, you might think maybe it’s time to update that formula to something “safer” such as: 70% branded links, 20% partial match links and 10% exact match links.

Rigid link building formulas like this are based on dangerous out-of-date mentalities. Instead, try a new “formula,” like this:

Develop amazing content
Get to know the influencers in your space
Contribute to relevant online communities
When appropriate, ask your friends to consider sharing your valuable content
Bank on earning a majority of your links passively (i.e., naturally)

The Wrap Up

Link building is still important, but treating it as a one-size-fits-all, cut-and-dry tactic is dangerous. Integrating link building into your overarching marketing and content marketing strategy is the only way to be future-proof — and open up new opportunities along the way.

Bing SEO Ranking Factors 2013

2013-10-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

Searchmetrics has released their SEO ranking factors for Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, today. Similar to their Google ranking factors, Searchmetrics analyzed 10,000 popular keywords and 300,000 websites appearing in the top 30 search results and looked at how various factors correlated with rankings.
The top five key findings were:

(1) Top brands rank higher on Bing, as they do in Google.

(2) Backlink numbers are closely linked to higher rankings on Bing

(3) Social signals closely linked to higher rankings

(4) Quality content is important for search rankings

(5) On page technical factors are a must have

Here is a chart showing the Bing ranking factors by importance:

The interesting part also is that when Searchmetrics compared the first page of search results on Bing and Google, they showed that 24.7% of the URLs listed were the same and 37.3% of the domains were the same. This clearly shows there is a difference in the results between Google and Bing.

5 Ways PPC Can Make You A Smarter Marketer

2013-10-10T22:19:00.002-07:00

I’ve come to the conclusion that search marketing makes you super smart when you use it to its full potential. Obviously, one doesn’t get smart by being lazy, complacent or having campaigns run on autopilot.google-adwords-square-logo

PPC smarts come from rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty with data, analysis, and data-driven decisions. In this article, I’ll cover several ways in which PPC can make you super smart.

1. Use PPC To Make Tough Strategic Decisions

Paid traffic ain’t free! So, it’s important to bark up good trees and to steer clear of trees that bear bad fruit. Let’s say your company sells a product to both B2B and B2C consumers. In your PPC account, you see that B2B margins/sales figures are much higher than B2C in terms of margins despite fewer sales and a much longer sales cycle. You explore further and notice the same is true in offline sales generated by your company. The PPC insight may help guide strategy more to the B2B side of the equation.

If you didn’t rely on PPC for leads, you might have missed this insight. When a lot of your traffic is “free” (SEO/inbound) or hard to attribute (word-of-mouth, brand, etc.), you don’t feel acute pain when you target the wrong types of customers. With PPC, you can watch that budget draining on poorly-targeted prospects and feel that painful feedback in the near term. It forces you to get smart!

Related to this, PPC virtually forces you to put appropriate B2B tracking in place: call tracking (both online & offline), CRM integration with your PPC accounts, etc. Sadly, it’s still not uncommon for companies to fail to track the entire process from click to conversion event. Even many of the big companies get it wrong!

There are many ways in which a company could get insight like:

Deciding to focus on (or highlight) one product or service over another
Deciding to go with a lower or higher price based on sales numbers and ROI

Optimizing business process. Although you’d like to generate sales online, your buyers may be more comfortable transacting via phone. With this insight, you decide to hire more inbound sales people to take customer calls.

There are countless other examples. Regardless, good insight from clear apples-to-apples comparisons is key to making key strategic decisions.

2. Use PPC To Form Overall Marketing Strategy

PPC is a platform you can use to understand your consumers better and attempt to craft offerings that resonate well with your target audience. PPC allows you to tweak elements without having to guess if something had an actual impact on your bottom line (like we can see in the offline world).

Among other things, PPC is an awesome way to test different offers, different pricing, customer pain points, value propositions, USPs, etc. One avenue for this learning is rapid feedback from ad creative testing.

Figuring out what resonates well and hitting the “marketing” mark can mean the difference between okay sales and absolutely killer sales. Marketing is a fine dance with many elements that need to be considered. With rapid iteration on many fine-grained elements of campaigns, it’s not uncommon to see conversion rates eventually increase 4xs. I shudder to think what performance must be like in marketing and advertising departments that can work with none of the data feedback we can easily access in PPC!

PPC also helps you to “fail fast.” It provides insight into poor business decisions so quickly that you dramatically limit the drain on time, energy, and resources that blind alleys might otherwise have causes.

Insight is not only useful for PPC marketing strategy. If you’re clever, you can use it to form strategy on your website, in your offline advertising, SEO, remarketing campaigns, email marketing campaigns, etc. I know many VPs of marketing that use PPC to test ideas they use in other contexts (like areas mentioned above). Many use PPC to determine a company’s unique selling proposition, or USP (especially for a new company or one going into a new niche, etc.).

3. Use PPC To Make Data-Driven Decisions

With PPC, we’re super fortunate to be able to access a lot of data. In accounts, I like to try a number of strategies to see what specific type of advertising yields the best result. These days, there are many ways to advertise using PPC. They are:

Product listing ads (if applicable)
Remarketing
Retargeting for search ads (now called RLSA)
Dynamic search ads
Under the display umbrella: interest categories, demographic targeting
And more

It’s foolish to place limitations on your advertising at the very beginning of your campaigns, such as choosing only very specific keyword terms or not trying all the types of advertising available to you. With a narrow strategy from the get-go, you’ll never see the full potential of your account.

To get extra bang, enhance new ideas with testing. Testing lends itself well to new ideas. If something didn’t work the first time that does not necessarily mean that it won’t work ever. Ask yourself: what can I change to make this idea produce a better result?

4. Learn To Deal With People (Different Stakeholders)

Working on PPC can give you access to many different stakeholders. As a result, PPC also gives you the ability to work on your skills to deal with many different types of people with many different goals/interests in the account.

It’s not uncommon to have to deal with the client (could be a marketing manager or CMO), your team, the company’s larger online marketing team (which may include SEO, social media, email marketing, etc.), the company’s offline marketing team, the company’s executive team including the CEO and so forth.

All of the above people have different needs and require different types of information. Learning to tailor info to particular audiences is key. And providing them with the info they need in an efficient manner is key to having good relationships with all stakeholders.

5. Hone Your Analytical Skills

As alluded to in previous points, PPC helps you develop super sharp analytical skills. We’re often considering a few data points when assessing whether keywords are working or not working. It’s not uncommon to have to analyze CTR, Quality Scores, impression shares, ad position, cost per conversion, conversion rate, and more.

That’s some serious analytical skills! And that doesn’t even get into the need to decide whether you are most comfortable inside AdWords, using Excel, using other third-party analysis tools, etc., or multiple tools. Your brain will get a workout no matter which tools you choose. And the choosing itself requires higher-order decision-making skill.

Don’t You Feel Smarter?

You’ve made the tough decisions and implemented your marketing strategy and this gives you a solid foundation on which to stand. You’re making data-driven decisions, and this not only gives you more options, it improves your bottom line.

You’ve learned how to deal with all kinds of people and stakeholders, and your marketing programs are thriving. You’ve primed your analytical skills and this opened the door to more conversions and cost savings. Yep, you’ve become super smart — and it’s all from managing your PPC accounts from the ground up. Try not to brag too much at the family reunion, okay?

Google’s Matt Cutts: User Redirection Based On Location Is Not Spam

2013-10-10T21:57:00.001-07:00

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a video yesterday clearly stating the geo-location or redirecting users based on their location is not spam. Google will not consider a site that uses geo-location techniques as spam.

What Google does consider spam is when you redirect GoogleBot to a web page of content that users cannot see. That is considered spam and a form of cloaking, according to Google’s guidelines. Google expects you treat GoogleBot as a user accessing your web site from the United States.

5 Link Building Opportunities Minus The Content

2013-10-09T22:13:00.003-07:00

Content is nearly synonymous with link building these days (or link ‘earning’, depending upon who you talk to). Even Google recently changed their user guidelines, which now imply the need to invest in content:

“In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share.”

This is a shift from their previous guidelines, which read:

“In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”

And, with the proliferation of content marketing (not to mention guest post link building), content has seen more emphasis today than ever before.

That’s without even mentioning Penguin, which strictly enforces link quality over link quantity. Seemingly all of the non-content strategies have been abandoned in favor of long term investments that take a lot of time, money, and resources to pull off.

But, there are still great link building opportunities that don’t require content, and can be pulled off with a fraction of the effort in many cases. Opportunities you shouldn’t be ignoring.

Here are five of my recent favorites.

1) Watch Brand Mentions

This is a strategy absolutely every SEO should be implementing, period. Monitoring the web for mentions of your brand/products is a must, because it can lead to:

A free link
The opportunity to participate in communities interested in your brand
A better understanding of how your brand is perceived

The internet is full of noise, and it can be very hard to filter that out into important interactions involving your business. Don’t sit back passively and let the internet rush by. You need to dive in and engage, especially when it comes to your brand.

A few tools that help you discover when your brand or product is being discussed:

Google Alerts
Fresh Web Explorer from Moz

Google alerts can be truly useful when used appropriately and spammy when used poorly. My advice is to play around with Google Alerts and create multiple filters to find what brings in the best leads. Don’t forget advanced operators when setting your queries – they’re a must.

Some examples I’d initially set up for myself:

“Page One Power”
“P1P”
“Page1power”
“Jon Ball” “Founder” OR “CEO”
“Jon Ball” SEO
“Jon Ball” link building
“Jonathan Ball” SEO
“Jonathan Ball” link building
“Jonathan Ball” “Founder” OR “CEO”

The Fresh Web Explorer from Moz is a more proactive approach to hunting out brand/product mentions, although it requires a pro account with Moz (formerly SEOmoz).

The tool is essentially a search bar enabling you to search for mentions either one week, two weeks, or four weeks back. Unlike Google Alerts, which will email you a list of URLs that have mentioned your keywords, you’ll need to manually search every so often to stay up to date.

Having said that, I consider the Fresh Web Explorer to be by far the superior of the two tools, doing a much better job of finding real, relevant mentions.

2) Competitor Backlink Analysis

Competitor backlink analysis should be step one in a proper link building campaign. Unfortunately, I often find this lacking or underutilized with new clients.

It’s such an easy win on multiple fronts – you have an easy shot at high quality links, you get to better know the client and the industry, and even potentially understand competitor strategies.

The whole process is fairly straightforward.

1) Create a list of direct competitors. Don’t gloss over this step by simply asking for a list – do a little investigative work!

2) Run a backlink analysis on the competitors. This can be done with a variety of tools, including:

Moz’s Open Site Explorer
Raven Tools
Link Assistant’s SEO SpyGlass
Ahrefs
MajesticSEO

3) Download various competitor’s backlinks

4) Merge into an excel doc

5) Delete duplicates and filter using predetermined metrics

6) Compare and contrast!

Also, don’t forget to compare overviews to get an idea of the big picture. Overview questions you should be asking:

How many links competitor vs client
How many linking domains vs total links
Anchor text diversity
Branded vs money keywords
Link velocity
Type of links
Type of sites linking
Average DA/PR
And certainly don’t think this is a once and done activity – you need to keep an eye on fresh links competitors are building to ensure you’re not missing any great opportunities!

If you’d like a more in-depth guide, SEER wrote a pretty solid guide for competitor backlink analysis in Excel.

4) 404 / Dead Link Building
One of the hardest (and most frustrating) parts of traditional research based link building is convincing a webmaster to include a link to your site. Often times it can feel as if you’re traversing the web panhandling relevant sites.

Added value should be the mantra of every professional link builder – tell them whats in it for them!

One of the easiest ways to bring added value is to quickly scan a page for broken links that you’ve determined to be a solid link building opportunity.

Webmasters are generally grateful for notification of broken links, and with the proper tools they’re extremely easy to isolate.

Domain HunterI recommend using Domain Hunter Plus, an extension easily added on to Chrome. It’s very lightweight and quick, requiring a one button push to examine all the links of the page you’re currently on. Once it’s scanned, it will let you know precisely which links are dead, which you can then roll into your outreach asking for a link..

Just remember to change your pitch; include the broken links first and then follow up with a link request – my favorite pitch goes along the lines of:

“While you’re updating your resource you might find it helpful to include (my client). They have some great information about (client’s niche).”

And it’s as easy as that – what normally feels like begging for a link is suddenly a friendly, helpful email with a much higher conversion rate. And best of all? You don’t feel like the SEO begging for yet another link.

5) Badging

Badging campaigns are one of my favorite win-win link building strategies. It does require a little bit more time, but I’ve never been disappointed with the results.

The concept is simple – you create a badge to serve as a reward or medallion of recognition for relevant sites. The badge itself serves as the link, and will closely match both the target site and your own.

For example, if you’re working with a site that sells fishing supplies, you could create an “Amazing Angler” or “Catch of the Day”, or even “Monster From The Deep” badge.

The idea is to create a badge that’s not only relevant to your site, but that centers around some kind of activity that other sites actively display and are proud of. Offering a badge from an official site will only increase their pride, and add value to their site (not to mention yours).

Just do me a favor, and please don’t spam this tactic. Make sure you’re an actual authority, the badge is highly relevant, and you’re only approaching other quality sites that truly deserve the badge.

This link building strategy can be highly effective, but only if you use it well. Pursue only quality links and you won’t have to worry when Google updates their algorithm, again.

Recap
There you have it – five high quality link building opportunities using only research based strategies.

There really are great link building opportunities that don’t hinge on content and aren’t manipulative or against Google’s guidelines. Although content is absolutely a great way to build links, link building campaigns need multiple strategies to be successful.

Quality unique content often takes a large investment, and can be slow to turn a profit. I’ve always said the best link building tool in the world is the human brain. A little creativity and understanding of an industry can go a very long way, and yield some amazing results.

So, before you go all in on a content based strategy, take some time to make sure you’re covering the basics and securing any quick wins available.

Content Curation: Pruning Old “Fresh” Content To Reveal The Evergreen

2013-10-08T22:24:00.002-07:00

Most sites deliver regularly-produced content as part of their architecture. At its simplest, it might just be a blog section through which company news, updates and outreach are posted. At its best, however, it’s a carefully pruned source of evergreen SEO traffic and a lean component of your site indexing strategy.

The General SEO Theory

Most SEOs that have been in the industry for a while would largely agree that overall domain SEO performance can be generalised to be a balance between the total backlink profile of the site (its “Authority”) and the total number of pages indexed on the domain (the total “Domain Sprawl”).

Obviously, this is a massive generalisation. But, in my experience, it is a fundamental axiom for SEO that’s stood the test of time and is a component of SEO that still moves the needle when SEO strategies built around it are executed.

With that in mind, it’s apparent that any content which is indexed (and therefore contributing to domain sprawl) has to pull its own weight or it will drag down the overall performance of the site.

This requirement is the basis of site architecture optimisation but is often ignored in the day-to-day management of a site’s SEO campaign. Why? Freshly generated content will always be a crucial part of a good domain architecture, but without a regular review of effectiveness, it can simply drift into long-term domain sprawl with little traffic return to show for it.

There are a couple of neat, quick search tricks we can use to find older content that’s failing to deliver return for its indexed SEO value. Let’s walk through them.

Finding The Old “Fresh”

Given that we’re in the business of reducing our indexed pages, the first tool you should turn to is Google. Using a combination of site index operators and indexed date range tools provided by Google, we can get a list of indexed URLs within any range of dates we’d like.

Let’s take a look at the BBC to see how this might throw up some opportunities to prune.

Chaining our operators and setting an earliest first index date of two years ago, we can dig out some cruft pretty easily:

I think we can agree that content like this and this are not necessarily of the highest value in the index (though they do now have extra backlink value, of course!). Though not necessarily “out of date” — their contained data is dynamically updated by the BBC — their indexing makes them landing pages without the surrounding BBC website. This makes for a very poor searcher experience; thus, this content is best cleaned away from the index.

On a side note, we can then quite easily find the BBC’s xml sitemap listing these pages. This strategy isn’t ideal, as it would override any canonicals and is just promoting the indexing of effectively frame pages.

We can take a more extreme view of the indexing date range to dig out some better examples of old content that could well be retired to benefit the domain as a whole. Tweaking the search to set the latest first index date to 2001 hits a goldmine.

By further refining our operators, we can dig out all examples of particular types of content that would do well to be removed from Google’s index. In this example, chaining an intitle operator of “VOTE2001″ with the site operator and setting a comprehensive date range will allow you to hoover up all example URLs that should be canonicalised into more useful content in the same section.

Additionally, if your underlying CMS system is flexible enough, you may be able to use the URL/Content patterns identified using this process to export and redirect all relevant content instead. Just beware that if you use a hard 301 redirect, and you leave link references to the content elsewhere on the site that are likely to be visited by real people, then you would be creating a poor user experience by forcing a redirect on them.

This is why I favour a canonical solution, as only the search engines are “redirected” — this means that for the edge cases where the old content is still relevant to users arriving from elsewhere on the site (like your own internal search function), the content is still accessible. Crucially, your old content is no longer pulling SEO value away from the rest of the domain.

With a site as large, and a history as long, as the BBC, this technique can be dramatically influential in improving overall rankings across the board for more relevant terms with tomorrow’s fresh content.

Google’s Matt Cutts: No More PageRank Updates This Year

2013-10-07T21:27:00.000-07:00

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said on Twitter yesterday that Google won’t be pushing out a new Google Toolbar PageRank update this year.

Niels Bosch asked on Twitter if we should expect an update to PageRank before 2014. In response to that, Matt Cutts said, “I would be surprised if that happened.”
It has now been 8 months since the last Google Toolbar PageRank update. In fact, the last update was on February 4, 2013 and honestly, I think PageRank is finally dead – at least the Toolbar PageRank.

I’d be surprised if there was another Toolbar PageRank update ever. Maybe Google will do one next year and then let it quietly go away forever.

Over the years, support for PageRank has dropped. Google never offered a Google Toolbar for Chrome or any add-on to show PageRank values. Google dropped the Google Toolbar for Firefox in June 2011. Internet Explorer is the last browser to still have a PageRank display offered by Google, but the data that flows into that display hasn’t been updated for over six months.

When we asked Google two months ago about when the next update would come, Google had no comment.

Penguin 5, With The Penguin 2.1 Spam-Filtering Algorithm, Is Now Live

2013-10-04T21:48:00.002-07:00

The fifth confirmed release of Google’s “Penguin” spam fighting algorithm is live. That makes it Penguin 5 by our count. But since this Penguin update is using a slightly improved version of Google’s “Penguin 2″ second-generation technology, Google itself is calling it “Penguin 2.1.” Don’t worry. We’ll explain the numbering nonsense below, as well as what this all means for publishers.

New Version Of Penguin Live Today

The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, shared the news on Twitter, saying the latest release would impact about 1 percent of all searches:

The link that Cutts points at, by the way, explains what Penguin was when it was first launched. It doesn’t cover anything new or changed with the latest release.

Previous Updates

Here are all the confirmed releases of Penguin to date:

Penguin 1 on April 24, 2012 (impacting around 3.1% of queries)
Penguin 2 on May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%)
Penguin 3 on October 5, 2012 (impacting around 0.3% of queries)
Penguin 4 (AKA Penguin 2.0) on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)
Penguin 5 (AKA Penguin 2.1) on Oct. 4, 2013 (impacting around 1% of queries)

Why Penguin 2.1 AND Penguin 5?

If us talking about Penguin 5 in reference to something Google is calling Penguin 2.1 hurts your head, believe us, it hurts ours, too. But you can pin that blame back on Google. Here’s why.

When Google started releasing its “Panda” algorithm designed to fight low-quality content, it called the first one simply “Panda.” So when the second came out, people referred to that as “Panda 2.” When the third came out, people called that Panda 3 — causing Google to say that the third release, because it was relatively minor, really only should be called Panda 2.1 — the “point” being used to indicate how much a minor change it was.

Google eventually — and belatedly — indicated that a Panda 3 release happened, causing the numbering to move into Panda 3.0, Panda 3.1 and so on until there had been so many “minor” updates that we having to resort to going further out in decimal places to things like Panda 3.92.

That caused us here at Search Engine Land to decide it would be easier all around if we just numbered any confirmed update sequentially, in order of when they came. No matter how “big” or “small” an update might be, we’d just give it the next number on the list: Penguin 1, Penguin 2, Penguin 3 and so on.

Thanks For The Headache, Google

That worked out fine until Penguin 4, because Google typically didn’t give these updates numbers itself. It just said there was an update, and left it to us or others to attach a number to it.

But when Penguin 4 arrived, Google really wanted to stress that it was using what it deemed to be a major, next-generation change in how Penguin works. So, Google called it Penguin 2, despite all the references to a Penguin 2 already being out there, despite the fact it hadn’t really numbered many of these various updates before.

Today’s update, as can be seen above, has been dubbed Penguin 2.1 — so supposedly, it’s a relatively minor change to the previous Penguin filter that was being used. However, if it’s impacting around 1 percent of queries as Google says, that means it is more significant than what Google might have considered to be similar “minor” updates of Penguin 1.1 and Penguin 1.2.

What Is Penguin Again? And How Do I Deal With It?

For those new to the whole “Penguin” concept, Penguin is a part of Google’s overall search algorithm that periodically looks for sites that are deemed to be spamming Google’s search results but somehow still ranking well. In particular, it goes after sites that may have purchased paid links.

If you were hit by Penguin, you’ll likely know if you see a marked drop in traffic that begins today or tomorrow. To recover, you’ll need to do things like disavow bad links or manually have those removed. Filing a reconsideration request doesn’t help, because Penguin is an automated process. Until it sees that what it considers to be bad has been removed, you don’t recover.

If you were previously hit by Penguin and have taken actions hopefully meant to fix that, today and tomorrow are the days to watch. If you see an improvement in traffic, that’s a sign that you’ve escaped Penguin.

What About Hummingbird?

If you’re wondering about how Penguin fits into that new Google Hummingbird algorithm you may have heard about, think of Penguin as a part of Hummingbird, not as a replacement for it.

Hummingbird is like Google’s entire ranking engine, whereas Penguin is like a small part of that engine, a filter that is removed and periodically replaced with what Google considers to be a better filter to help keep out bad stuff.

SEO Reporting: It’s Time We Get Away From Minutia & Focus On What Matters

2013-10-03T22:06:00.002-07:00

For SEOs, reporting hasn’t exactly been easy over the past few years. How we measure and how we strategize has had to evolve as Google has altered or retired the tools we use or the way search works. We’ve seen five main shifts that have truly changed how we originally measured SEO success, and I argue that we now need to face reality and dramatically shift our views on how to measure SEO effectiveness.

Issue 1: Personalized Search & Geotargeted Results

While Google has nearly always tried to personalize organic search results, a major shift occurred in 2009 as personalized search took on greater geotargeting capabilities. With that shift, every search became unique, depending on the location where a searcher is physically located.

What did it mean for reporting? Because each search query produced more personalized results, the rankings from searches in one geographic location would definitely be different than those in another. While there are some workarounds for this issue, it does often confuse clients when a rankings report with “normalized” rankings doesn’t match what the client sees when searching for the same search terms.

Issue 2: Removal Of The Keyword Tool

The Google Keyword Tool (external to AdWords) had been on its way out for some time. I was sitting next to Marty Weintraub at SMX East in 2010 when a representative from Google admitted that the tool was primarily focused on providing data from ad clicks versus organic searches. While we sat there, a bit shocked, it was a sign of what was to come.

As SEOs, what we do is manipulate search results, plain and simple. Whether that manipulation of Google’s results is for a good cause or not, SEOs play with Google’s algorithmic factors to promote their websites. But if you’re Google, do you want to encourage this behavior? No. If you’re Google, you don’t want others to manipulate what you believe is a valid way to rank websites via the algorithm.

And so in August 2013, Google retired the Google Keyword Tool for users outside of AdWords, leaving SEOs who are not advertising via AdWords to choose between other keyword tools, often paid tools that do not have direct access to actual organic search data.

Issue 3: Google Goes Public

I’d be remiss not to mention what I feel is Google’s largest influence today: its shareholders. Google held its IPO in 2004, with Google AdWords encompassing more than 85% of Google’s quarterly revenue (pdf). Given that AdWords still makes up the majority of Google’s revenue, is it truly in Google’s best interest to boost the efforts of SEOs, or to boost the use of AdWords?

While I don’t like to play the conspiracy theorist, I am a businesswoman. As such, I’m always evaluating what lines of business are most profitable and which can boost my bottom line revenue. I can’t expect Google to act differently, especially when it is accountable to Wall Street’s expectations. SEO doesn’t boost revenue for Google.

Issue 4: (Not Provided)

Earlier this week, Google confirmed that it is going to encrypt all keywords from Google organic search, speeding up a timeline that had been slowly creeping toward a 100% (not provided) reality.

While we’ve all likely been prepping for this moment, I think we all likely assumed we’d have more time to prepare. The (not provided) Doomsday Clock on notprovidedcount.com even estimated that we would reach 100% (not provided) in February 2017, but now shows that the complete blocking of keyword data will likely be seen by all sites by November 2013 (and possibly earlier).

OK, so Google’s made it more difficult to research and choose keywords, and now they’re taking away SEOs’ ability to track how their keywords are actually performing from Google organic search.

Even if Google were providing some of the keyword data, like some percentage, is it accurate? It would be incorrect to assume that if Google is hiding 50% of your queries in Google Analytics that the 50% was applied evenly, fairly, across all keywords. The hidden 50% could include a higher or lower percentage of brand keywords. You would have no way of knowing. So even if (not provided) were not being implemented at 100%, is the query data you have today accurate? Not likely.

Issue 5: Likely Inaccuracies of Google Webmaster Tools Keyword Data

But wait! We have Google Webmaster Tools to save us, right? Maybe not. Ian Lurie at Portent Interactive wrote a blog post in June claiming that the query data in Google Webmaster Tools is highly inaccurate. It was a compelling post and should make you question whether the query data in Google Webmaster Tools can be trusted.

I would also question this: if the Google Webmaster Tools keyword query data is highly inaccurate, could it not also stand to reason that the rankings data provided by Google Webmaster Tools may also be highly inaccurate?

So Where Do We Go From Here?

While keywords certainly help SEOs to determine strategy, far too many marketing executives rely on keywords and rankings to determine SEO success when in reality this isn’t measuring the end goal of SEO and what most marketers care most about.

Keywords and rankings are merely providing clicks and impressions — they are not key indicators per se of purchase or reaching various conversion goals. In my estimation, keywords and rankings are getting into the minutia of SEO — while they can help an SEO strategize, they are not key to determining the impact of SEO on an organization.

Let’s make a pact, SEOs. Let’s stop reporting on minutia. Now is a great time to make a dramatic shift.

If you’re an SEO agency, it’s important to understand what your clients care about when it comes to measuring the success of SEO. In the past, this may have included keyword traffic and rankings reports. But today, those measurements may not be available or accurate going forward. So why report on something that isn’t an accurate measurement?

Ultimately, marketers have the same job they always have had — to prove the success of their campaigns. Their jobs depend on it. A recent study from Adobe shows that ROI is a clearly important metric to marketers:

So if ROI is important, why are rankings or keywords important? While they can be indicators for us as SEOs, guiding us in a direction, the ultimate measurement of the effectiveness of SEO is still how much revenue it can generate.

What are the next steps? John Doherty wrote a great piece the other day on Moz.com about using Google Analytics to map your goals to your marketing funnel. Using Google Analytics attribution modeling and combining those efforts with established goals, you can more directly measure not just the inbound traffic from organic search, but also its overall impact on various conversions, even applying revenue projections or actuals to the model.

Ultimately, that’s what marketers care about — conversion and ROI. So let’s help the cause of SEO and definitively show the value of SEO rather than focusing on the minutia of keywords and rankings that can’t be accurately measured and don’t necessarily define ROI.

Perspective Matters In B2B Website Content

2013-10-02T21:46:00.001-07:00

In B2B marketing, relationships lead to conversions. Content strategy is an essential tool for driving traffic through SEO and social media, and for engaging and building trust with audiences online. This means choosing the best content type (e.g., copy, video, print, audio, whitepaper, etc.) and the right words to convey your message. But all too often, companies miss the mark with their website copy.

Your website copy is a creative asset, just as your website design, print collateral and video content are. The beauty, and the risk, is that we are all writers. The trick is knowing when to bring in a pro. An experienced copywriter can create language that aligns with your brand message, speaks to your target audience and generates more leads.

Sometimes, the existing copy simply needs a light edit. Website redesigns almost always necessitate heavy editing in addition to the development of new content for certain pages. In addition, the outside writer may recommend edits to your copy in other channels, such as print, for alignment with your website copy and brand message.

Writing always starts with research into your goals, your brand, your company, its competitors and the industry itself. Existing copy gives the writer an idea of your brand voice, the language in your industry and what elements are missing from your ad copy. The writer may also want to conduct phone or in-person interviews. Your feedback is another important source of information, given your unique perspective on your brand. Research typically continues throughout any copy project, starting broad and narrowing in on specific sub-topics as the work progresses.

It seems that the biggest copy mistake I see is one of perspective. Your audience wants to quickly assess what’s in it for them, without having to think about it. B2B web copy often focuses on the “we” and “our.” Like the bore at the cocktail party who only talks about himself, this self-centered copy might hold some people’s attention briefly but ultimately doesn’t impress. Instead, try to write from your audience’s perspective. The use of “we” and “our” is often appropriate, but should be balanced with “you” and “your.”

Example 1: Too Focused On “We” & “Our”

The following example copy is based on copy from an actual B2B company’s website home page. The company’s ticker symbol and product descriptions have been changed. This copy effectively describes what the company is, but completely lacks the audience’s perspective. In addition, “cash flowing” in the last line is a distracting grammatical error. By the way, this is the only copy on the company’s home page.

“We are a publicly traded holding company that is vertically and horizontally integrated in the restaurant technology industry. The Company trades on the OTCPK under the stock symbol “ACME.” Our strategy is executed through development of proprietary technologies, development of proprietary software, and possible acquisitions of companies that have a unique product niche, cash flowing, and provide strong management.”

Example 2: A More Balanced Approach

By comparison, this copy from another actual B2B company’s website describes their services with the audience in mind. While the copy isn’t perfect, it reads better, is more relatable and might just convert better, too.

“Acme publishes targeted information technology websites that provide you with resources for researching products, developing strategy and making cost-effective purchase decisions. Our network of technology-specific websites gives you access to information technology industry experts, independent content and analysis and the Web’s largest library of vendor-neutral and vendor-provided white papers, webcasts, podcasts, videos, virtual trade shows, research reports and more.”

Example 3: Audience-Focused Copy

We can improve upon Example 2 with a few strategic edits. By breaking up the last sentence into two sentences and placing even more focus on the audience, we can make the message even more engaging.

“Acme publishes targeted information technology websites that provide you with resources for researching products, developing strategy and making cost-effective purchase decisions. Gain access to leading information technology industry experts, independent content and analysis through our network of technology-specific websites. Here you will find the Web’s largest library of vendor-neutral and vendor-provided white papers, webcasts, podcasts, videos, virtual trade shows, research reports and more.”

Which of the above examples would make you want to read more, download a brochure or maybe even submit a lead form? My money is on Example 3.

Final Thoughts

Website copy is a valuable creative asset that should be treated with as much consideration as the design itself. Writing effective B2B sales copy takes skill that not every business person possesses. Always consider the perspective of your audience, and know when to bring in a professional writer. As any search marketer can tell you, great content can make a difference in your conversion performance.

Are You Setting The Right Link Building Expectations?

2013-10-01T22:05:00.001-07:00

In the world of search and online marketing, we talk a lot about the evolving landscape, particularly when it comes to link building. Tactics that work one day can stop working with the switch of a Google button. Tactics that you think are legit can suddenly be deemed a “link scheme.”

On top of that, there’s so much misinformation out there that the thought of just explaining link building can be daunting.

Now factor in your clients.

How much do they know about link building?
How much do you tell them?
Do they have a full understanding of what’s actually required to obtain high quality links?

When it comes to setting the right link building expectations, you not only have to take into consideration client knowledge, you also must look at how you’re selling link building to that client.

Here are a few common scenarios:

Link Building As A Service

When selling link building as its own service, there is full accountability. Clients need to be completely aware of what you are doing and they need to see where those links are being built.

Julie Joyce, owner of Link Fish Media, says that not only do many of their clients come to them strictly for link building, they are often charged by the link. That means monthly and/or weekly reporting, complete transparency in how links are being obtained, and program measurement.

How does one quantify success in a program like this?

According to Joyce, that can really vary, but the key is to understand what the goals are going in:

“Clients all have their own different ideas of what constitutes success. Some like to look at rankings and some are more concerned with traffic. Some care more about whether the links we build actually bring them any business. Some are happy knowing they’re doing something to keep up with their competitors.

Basically, if a client is happy with our work, they’re happy because they like what we’re doing and not because we feed them stylized reports that mislead them into thinking we’re doing something magical.”

When offering link building services, know what the objectives are and be open with the client. How many links can the client expect? Where will you be focusing? What issues do they need to be aware of, if any?

By providing this information ahead of time, you set yourself and the client up for a good relationship and a successful program.

Link Building As An Integrated Approach

integrated link buildingFor many of us, link building has simply become integrated into our overall online marketing efforts. According to Erin Everhart, Director of Digital Marketing at 352media.com, “Link building fits into everything — SEO, social, content marketing, even email — so it’s just a part of what we do.”

Indeed. Much of the content we create at my company is generated to build links and drive traffic. Social media strategies are designed to drive shares and get people talking about a brand. These are in essence link building tactics, and while we don’t sell these as separate “link building services,” it doesn’t mean link building should be ignored when talking to clients.

According to Everhart, even though they take an integrated approach at 352, they do still track and report link building efforts (for the most part):

“We track internally with Raven for anything that we actively get ourselves (1 to 1 link building, like broken link building or resource listing). We’ll report these to clients on a monthly basis. [However]…For larger campaigns where we try to attract links organically, we won’t report specifics.”

As for measurement, Everhart says they are much more focused on traffic and conversions versus rankings or link quantity:

“We’ve stopped tracking rankings with the occasional reporting from Google Webmaster Tools… We also don’t guarantee any number of links each month. Too many variables in that, and it’s just not scalable or feasible.”

Offering link building as part of an integrated approach? Make sure the client knows that while link building is not a separate line item on their invoice, it’s something you will be doing.

Most importantly, be open and honest with your clients about where links are coming from and help them understand the benefits that can come from a great piece of content or fixing those broken links.

Link Building For Big Brands

For many big brands, link building may not seem like something that’s even necessary. After all, there are PR teams, massive advertising campaigns, and increased overall brand awareness. That doesn’t mean link building doesn’t happen, it just can occur in different ways.

According to Ryan Jones, Manager of Search Strategy & Analytics at SapientNitro.com,

“Most large brands aren’t too concerned with it [link building]. They know links are important, but they also know that their job is more about making it easier for fans, customers, and press to link to the site, and less about active link building.

For example, when we release a new product, people will talk about it. It’s our job to ensure that we have content on the site at the time of press releases and news mentions, that our internal linking structure makes that content easy to find and link to, and that we’re working with the social and PR teams around what content to promote and how they should link.”

What’s important to note here is that link building doesn’t have to mean just outreach. There are often a number of technical elements that go into the process. In fact, according to Jones, “One of my biggest projects this year involves minimizing the amount of URL changes we make from one product cycle to the next, in order to help us preserve link authority.”

Building links for a big brand? Make it clear to the client upfront that web development changes will be needed and figure out a process. And don’t be afraid to get to know the client’s PR and social teams. They can be your biggest asset in capturing links from high quality sources.

Don’t forget about measurement. According to Jones this can come in several ways:

“I like to look at things like unique referring domains to show quality links that are sending traffic. Also, I’m not a huge fan of ranking reports, but I do like showing the impressions graph from Webmaster Tools with significant SEO initiative dates marked on the graph. Then the client can loosely see the impact and how long it took to realize it.”

Final Thoughts

Setting client expectations can be hard in any industry, but when it comes to link building, there are quite a few variables to consider. Just remember, the key is communication.

Know what your client knows
Be open with how your services work
Set goals based on their wants and needs
Set and discuss what the client can expect

What other tips do you have for setting the proper link building expectations?

After Blocking Keywords In Referrers, Now Google Stops Sharing Through Google Webmaster Tools

2013-09-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

Last week, Google moved to send all searches through Google SSL Search, setting up the ultimate end of keyword data passed along via referrers non-advertisers. Now, Google’s chief official alternative channel for this information — Google Webmaster Tools — has also stopped sharing the data.

Google Webmaster Tools has had outages before, so maybe this is just a temporary bug. But if so, it’s terrible timing.

Google stopped reporting keyword data through the “Search Queries” area as of September 25. There’s no data for that day or any of the following ones, from what I can see — and others on Twitter have reported a similar omission.

That puts the cutoff happening only two days after Google confirmed that it had ramping up the use of Google SSL Search. Even people not logged into Google are now directed to Google SSL Search. That causes search terms to be stripped from the “referrer” data passed along to publishers, except when people click on ads. That referrer data passes.

The data withholding, coupled with an earlier move to allow publishers to archive search term information if they use Google’s AdWords system — rather than the Google Webmaster Tools system — has led to much suspicion that Google’s holding back the data not just for privacy reasons (and some doubt this) but also to push ads.

On Monday, we asked Google about the issue — whether it was a bug or a permanent change. The company has yet to respond. That fits in with Google’s earlier refusal to answer further questions I sent last week about the reasons why it increased the use of secure search — and it’s not encouraging for frustrated publishers.

Google Launches New Card-Based “Unified Design” Search Results For Mobile Devices

2013-09-29T21:53:00.002-07:00

Google has just rolled out their new “more unified design” of displaying search results for mobile devices, including smartphones and tablet devices.

As expected, Google said A new “more unified design” will offer “cleaner and simpler, optimized for touch, with results clustered on cards so you can focus on the answers you’re looking for.”

Here are pictures from how the interface looks on an iPhone and iPad:

We’ve seen Google testing this interface earlier this month and now it is finally live.

For more on the Knowledge Graph and other changes announced last week, see Google’s blog post. And for more from the media event last week, see our FAQ about the Google Hummingbird search algorithm and Danny Sullivan’s live blog coverage.

Google: SEO Problems, Solutions & Wishlists

2013-09-26T22:11:00.003-07:00

When I was a little boy, my parents had an effective way of making me behave. They’d warned me that if I was rude, disobedient or messy, the bogeyman would come and get me. I never saw a bogeyman or even knew what one looked like — but my imagination ran wild over this terrifying phantom that held my fate in its cruel hands and would ruthlessly punish me if I deviated from the straight and narrow path!

Well, replace “parents” with “Google” and ‘”bogeyman” with “Panda” or “Penguin” (or any other fanciful fauna Google-watchers come up with in the future), and you have our SEO universe in a nutshell: SEO practitioners feeling terrified, not knowing what will make us run afoul of the powerful search giant that holds our (clients’) fortunes in its capricious palm.

Google puts the onus on individuals and companies that are looking to make their site more visible in SERPs, saddling them with responsibilities they may not be qualified to handle and often punishing them when they fail to get their websites “up to code.” Website owners are forced to become experts at understanding and complying with Google’s guidelines.

Some time ago, I wrote an SEO column offering E-commerce SEO tips for a business owner with little knowledge about Internet methodology and technology, to try and explain how Google’s algorithms work. Even with this information, such users would be unlikely to handle these nuances on their own.

Is it fair of a search engine, then, to ask users to figure out the complex and shifting world of SEO?
Could any other company have done the same?

Is it justifiable that Google has shifted the blame for what, in my personal opinion, are weaknesses in its algorithms?

Shouldn’t Google instead focus on building a better algorithm and handle bugs and weaknesses more efficiently, instead of threatening and punishing users?

For any company selling products and services, being found on Google search has become mandatory for success in the modern economy. Search engines have grown to become a critical early component in a customer’s research and buying cycle. If you’re not found on the SERPs, the sale goes to your competitors. That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is critical; to businesses that are constantly looking for ways to increase sales, qualified leads and business growth, SEO offers a goldmine of opportunities.

But the problem is, if you don’t fall in line with Google’s rules and guidelines, you risk consequences. To make matters worse, the rules are not always clear and are difficult for people to understand. Sometimes they are even top secret, as with the search ranking algorithms.

The playing field is not level, either. All sites are not treated equally under Google’s Law, with larger brands often having an advantage. If Google is the search engine responsible for around one-half or more of your revenue (and has been for years), and then suddenly decides to throw you out of its search results, you will lose a lot of money – maybe even risk bankruptcy.

You’re being judged and sentenced without even a fair trial — and the consequences can be a “death sentence” for your business! This is not fair. Google isn’t — and shouldn’t be — the police, judge and jury. Right?

But as every SEO consultant is painfully aware, dealing with Google’s ever-changing guidelines is as difficult as can be (also see “10 things Most SEO consultants hate“). The rules are hard to understand. They are typically vague, unclear and difficult to follow. As a consequence, even when people actually want to obey and follow the guidelines, they can’t!

Confusion Over Ever-Changing Rules

Google’s Penguin update aimed to penalize sites that were in violation of Google’s guidelines. It is obviously of value to both searchers and website owners to penalize those who are engaging in clearly unethical or manipulative SEO practices, but Google has often been vague about which practices fall within this category.

For example, Google has recently cracked down on “unnatural links” – leaving everyone but professional SEO consultants confused about the distinction between “optimization” and “manipulation.” Consider the following:

Press releases were first welcomed, then rejected for having links with target keywords in anchor text (which aims to rank a site higher).

Blog commenting was effective for years as a way to gain better rankings. Later, Google warned against using them for this purpose — and punished “offenders.”

Having bloggers on your payroll or giving away products for a link is no longer kosher.

Forum signatures with target keywords in anchor text have been used for many years… until Google suddenly decided it didn’t like the practice.

Optimized links in a theme or website footer continues to work well to secure high rankings, despite being manipulative.

Matt Cutts recently said that “unnatural” inbound links would no longer be considered a quality ranking signal and could even be flagged as a “link scheme.” If that’s true, why even list it as a “link scheme” and warn against it? If its algorithms are handling the problem, why does Google continue to threaten website owners about it?

From my own point of view, this raises an interesting question:

Has Google really become better at spotting manipulation involving these kinds of links? Or are warnings like this an admission that this is something it is not especially good at, and therefore sending out a threat/warning is just a strategy to try to scare people away from trying to exploit these loopholes in its algorithms?

Some websites choose not to comply with Google’s guidelines for years, yet escape being caught. Others are penalized quickly and severely. It seems purely random — which means that you are not competing on an equal playing field. In the offline world, such behavior would be called unfair. In a court of law, it would attract corrective measures to deliver equal justice and equal protection under the law.

Business owners often don’t understand what Google means or wants. We’re not mind readers. It’s time Google did something about this. Matt Cutts himself has become a cult figure who is closely watched and analyzed by anxious SEO practitioners. The emergence of sites like The Short Cutts is a true sign that Google should step up and do something constructive about this. It can’t carry on with all the cloak-and-dagger secret stuff couched in vague, unclear guidelines. It’s time for the search giant to decide to help us in a much better way than it has in the past.

The company has too much power, and there is no “equality under the law” as things stand. Far too often, you can’t even get a fair trial. It’s not clear what the rules are — what is allowed, and what isn’t. We’re even seeing retroactive penalties, where you can get punished for what you did many years ago, even though what you did back then was not in violation of Google’s guidelines at the time!

Google isn’t a law enforcement officer on the information super-highway, yet it hands out speeding tickets. And these aren’t your run of mill $50 tickets… we’re talking about potentially millions (or even billions) of dollars in lost sales and profits for some companies. Maybe even bankruptcy, if a site is penalized and its traffic or sales take a deep dive.

With this power, Google should be forced to behave more responsibly, and offer webmasters and SEO experts a fair trial. Or it should at least lay down the rules or guidelines in a way that people can actually read and understand them. That’s my personal opinion.

Google Launches Hashtag Search, Shows Google+ Posts On Search Results Page

2013-09-25T21:34:00.001-07:00

The integration of Google+ across Google properties continues in a big way today with the launch of hashtag search.

Simply put, if you search Google for a hashtag, you might see Google+ posts using that hashtag to the right of the regular search results.

Google’s Zaheed Sabur announced the new feature this morning on Google+, saying that it’s available initially for English language searches on both Google.com and Google.ca.

The only posts that will show up on Google searches are those that were shared publicly, or shared with you (if you’re a Google+ user). Clicking on one of the Google+ posts leads you to Google+ where the search is reproduced.

By pure coincidence, a Google.com search just now for the #googleglass hashtag showed a Google+ post last night from our founding editor, Danny Sullivan, in the right column. (You can click for a larger version.)

The Google+ posts will scroll automatically, or you can control them manually via the up/down arrows at the top.

Note, too, that Google is trying to pre-empt anti-competitive claims by including links at the bottom to do the same search on other social networks. In this case, my options were to do the same search on Twitter and Facebook. It’s not clear at this point if other social networks (Instagram, Vine, etc.) will be added, or are already able to appear depending on the hashtag being used.