And whilst Google may have escaped retribution for this without consequence for some time, the company has now been handed a deadline of a ‘matter of weeks’ from the European Commission, to outline exactly how it will quell four separate antitrust concerns that it is manipulating search results in its favour.

The European Commission commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, has personally written to executive chairman Eric Schmidt to “offer Google the possibility to come up in a matter of weeks with first proposals of remedies to address each of these points.”

So what, according to the document, are the points in question?

• The first point focuses on how Google displays “its own vertical search services differently”, thus giving them greater exposure and potentially leading to “preferential treatment”.
• The second point remarked on Google copying content from competing vertical search services and using it in its own results. Without prior authorisation for this, it could lead to competitors no longer producing unique content to help users out of fear of it being stolen by Google.
• Thirdly, there is concern over the level of restrictions that Google imposes on search ads, which are “advertisements that are displayed alongside search results when a user types a query in a website’s search box”. Essentially this brings into question the exclusivity that Google has to sell advertising on search terms that users may look for.
• Finally, Almunia focuses on Google AdWords, questioning the lack of “seamless transfer” and portability to move campaigns onto other search advertising platforms, such as Microsoft’s adCenter. Specifically, the EC is concerned “that Google imposes contractual restrictions on software developers which prevent them from offering tools that allow the seamless transfer of search advertising campaigns across AdWords and other platforms for search advertising”.

What can Google do?

Schmidt and the team at Google must provide a plan, or ‘remedies package’, that will address all of these claims and serve to calm concerns; however should the response be unsatisfactory, “the on-going formal proceedings will of course continue, including the possible sending of a Statement of Objections.” This could lead to multi-billion fines and forced remedies, as well as potential damage of the company name.

An anonymous competitor commented in the Guardian that, “There are only two outcomes. Either Google takes the easy option, and makes substantial changes, or the EC moves in on it. We now have an endpoint, which is remedies that are binding, and which restore the level playing field.”

The investigations, dating back to 2009 though officially launched in 2010, were initially sparked by Google service competitors, such as Foundem, Ciao and Hotmaps, complaining that their services were unfairly punished and artificially lowered in Google search results. Foundem recently released a statement praising the action, with Shivaun Raff, CEO, stating “Foundem’s complaint, filed in November 2009 and updated in February 2010, was the first to document how Google systematically manipulates its ostensibly neutral search results to promote its own services while simultaneously demoting or excluding those of its competitors.”

She added, “We are pleased that the commission has affirmed Foundem’s complaint, listing search manipulation as its first concern.”

What is Google’s stance on this?

European public policy spokesman for Google, Al Verney has responded to these claims, stating, “We’ve only just started to look through the Commission’s arguments. We disagree with the conclusions but we’re happy to discuss any concerns they might have.

He added, “Competition on the web has increased dramatically in the last two years since the Commission started looking at this and the competitive pressures Google faces are tremendous.”

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, it is likely that Google will address these concerns head on with as little action as possible to affect its strong business model; however, with such a large market share, aspects of the search engine may change, and be subjected to extensive market-testing before the close of legal proceedings. Facing further stresses such as another anti-trust investigation by the FTC, complaints by online travel companies, patent infringement issues with their mobile platform Android and further patent scrutiny over its recently-acquired company, Motorola Mobility, Google look set to have a trying year ahead.

Well, now Google is aiming to change all that and present encyclopaedic results without the need to click on any other sites.

Using the right margin that’s generally blank in Google results, save for some occasional PPC and Google+ results, Google will begin to display detailed information on the searched topic. The  Google Knowledge Graph “panel” will only appear when Google has relevant results to display, and will be based around enties such as people, places, movies, cities etc.

Say you were searching for information on comedian Eddie Izzard for example; you’d naturally search ‘Eddie Izzard’ in Google and be greeted with this page of results.

This page is seen when searching google.com without being signed in to a Google account. The first result is relevant, and the following entries will likely tell me everything I need to know after some quick reading; however there is a large amount of white space on the right that could be put to better use.

After signing in, we can see the Google Knowledge Graph in action…

The organic results are exactly the same; however we can now see a profile on the right hand page, informing us of Eddie’s birth date, height, education, awards, parents, media he’s appeared in and related comedians. Whilst I cannot deny that this is an impressive addition to the traditional search results, you have to wonder just how useful the panel can be.

It’s likely that you’re going to desire more information so whilst quickly glancing over the provided details, you will still inevitably navigate to the respective pages to find out more.

However, the introduction of this feature is a signifier that Google is working towards understanding search results, using approximately 3.5 billion different attributes to organise what is shown. Vice-president of engineering at Google and head of search, Amit Singhal, said, “Over the years, as search has improved, people expect more. We see this as the next big improvement in search relevance… We’re proud of our first baby step—the Knowledge Graph—which will enable us to make search more intelligent”.

The technology itself is not an unknown however and has been used by Wolfram-Alpha since 2009 – receiving a large boost by integration with Apple’s Siri software and a partnership with rival search engine, Bing. Whilst the technology is similar, Wolfram Alpha tends to offer more in-depth answers to questions, whilst Google’s Knowledge Graph aims to show more popular results.

With clear shifts toward personalised search results and keeping users on the results pages as long as possible, Google is clearly growing into a smarter service and aiming to become all things to all people.

I’m already preparing for a HAL-9000 situation.

]]> http://www.lakestarmedia.com/blog/2012/05/17/the-google-knowledge-graph-revolutionising-search-or-bombarding-users-with-unnecessary-information/feed/ 1 http://www.lakestarmedia.com/blog/2012/05/15/creating-the-best-link-bait-on-the-internet-bieber-rt-ladygaga-never-be-afraid-to-dream/ http://www.lakestarmedia.com/blog/2012/05/15/creating-the-best-link-bait-on-the-internet-bieber-rt-ladygaga-never-be-afraid-to-dream/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 14:32:25 +0000 Tom Clark http://www.lakestarmedia.com/blog/?p=4686 Continue reading →]]> Link bait is the holy grail of content – the quickest way to gain links organically and legitimately, and ultimately provide a long-term linkable asset that nigh outweighs any other method.

Link bait can be anything from an article to a picture, video, podcast, presentation, mp3 – as long as it’s unique and fresh content that people are going to want to read (and more importantly share with each other), you’re onto a winner.

So why isn’t everyone doing it?

It’s difficult. Just as we cannot predict the news, what next week’s lotto numbers will be or that Aguero would score in injury time, winning Man City the Premier League, it’s nigh impossible to know what is going to go viral and get a positive return on links. It can take a considerable amount of time to compose link bait, and what’s the guarantee that it will even work?

Well, just because I can, what follows will be a mash up of every type of link bait to demonstrate and explain the exact way to create link bait, if we ignore logic, quality and a cohesive narrative.

First of all, you should identify the most relevant popular topics and ‘what’s hot’. Gearing a post around that can nab you a good deal of relevant searches and draw the eye of the casual reader – hence why the blog title looks that way. An even more effective title would be:

 ‘Is Kim Kardashian leaving Kanye West to make Justin Bieber her next Boyfriend, or is he too distracted with the epic Galaxy S3, iPad 4G and buying Facebook shares?’ 

Alternatively, you could announce the secret release of a brand new smart phone called the ‘Parabola’ and report on the specifications, stating an official release in upcoming days. It’s likely to be a strong contender in the world of imaginary smartphones, featuring a 42 megapixel camera, dual touch-screen and the ability to actually call someone easily. Essentially, becoming your own news source can ensure you get sites linking to you as a trusted authority – just don’t make things up like I just did.

If you’re feeling particularly creative, you could even make use of a meme to share and spread like wildfire…

But as you can see, it’s sometimes harder to perfect than you might first think. In which case you might turn to slandering something popular or offering an alternative view to an accepted opinion. I could quite easily state, like so many other blogs, that ‘SEO is dead’, ‘Jan Moir always speaks the truth’ or ‘Why Twilight is better than The Hunger Games’.

Simply stating something that people are likely to disagree on should ensure that people are going to comment, share and link to it – this can be perfectly surmised in the old Irish proverb – ‘If you want an audience start a fight.’ However, this can prove to be pretty risky as you will likely no longer be regarded as a respected news source, but just a means of controversy.

Rather than relying on controversy, celebrity or breaking news, you could instead offer something tangible to your readers in the form of a widget or tool. These need not be necessarily groundbreaking, but could offer a handy service like a site validator, news aggregator or even a love calculator.

And even if you can’t manage this, why not offer a badge? Bloggers love shiny badges, and if you ensure it links back to your page, it can be a simple way to get some blogs in your link profile.

Essentially, it all comes down to quality content that people are going to want to share – you can’t force something to go viral but with careful monitoring of the market, an understanding of the audience and a sustained social campaign,  it’s certainly easier to encourage the organic process.

Do the new Google comparison ads sacrifice user experience for commercial gain?

Google UK recently launched its comparison service, which shows a new section of sponsored ads between the traditional paid listings and organic search results and whilst this may not affect the majority of internet users, simply because the actual scope of it is relatively small, it does hint at a sense of foul play.

A search for the terms ‘compare credit card’, ‘compare current account’ or ‘compare savings accounts’ will yield a result that looks something like this (and bear in mind that this is on a standard 1366×768 24” screen):

Immediately, we can see the new ‘compare saving accounts’ section, which completely obliterates any organic results from being above the fold – it may help  navigation to the respective credit card application sites, but this  cause even more problems.

The new sponsored links navigate the user to a comparison table that briefly details the benefits of each account, and then provides a direct link to the application page itself. No reviews, no extra info – just a simple, fluid and straightforward process – exactly what Google has been providing for years.

So what’s the issue?

This isn’t necessarily what you want when you’re signing up for something as important as a credit card or savings account – you want full details, such as feedback, context and particulars on the product itself. The footer on the comparison page itself states that ‘The content of the site is for information purposes only and does not constitute advice.’, however the line between ‘information’ and ‘advice’ is certainly blurred in situations such as this.

Michael Ossei, finance expert at uswitch.com, states “Those looking for financial products, such as credit cards, tend to need more than just a simple comparison table – they need information about the products and context so that they can make an informed choice… These results tables are sorely missing the broader information that consumers need and that sites like ours provide.”

Ossei also states that whilst the ads do display details such as APR, they “do not show a representative APR (cost of credit). Its response has been that the representative APR is one click away, but with the introduction of the 2011 Consumer Credit Directive all sites are required to show the cost of credit.”

How did Google acquire this service?

In March of last year, Google bought British financial comparison site Beathatquote.com for £37.7m and immediate fears were that they would place themselves higher than their competitors, such as Money Supermarket and Go Compare. With this purchase, Google are now ‘a trading name of BeatThatQuote.com Limited, an appointed representative of Best Value Financial Services Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA)’.

As a side note, only 24 hours after the purchase, Google penalised and removed BTQ’s website from the search index for SEO activity outside of the webmaster guidelines, though the site does still exist with regular updates.

Is this the end for price comparison sites?

On May 10^th, global information services company Experian sold comparison sites LowerMyBills and PriceGrabber to Indian digital marketing company, Ybrant Digital for $175m – little over 20% of the price that they purchased both for in 2005 ($815m).

So, could Google be doing too little too late – are moneysaving forums the real draw for those looking for true comparisons, or are Experian simply changing direction? There is certainly the potential for financial comparison sites to lose value as a consequence of Google placing themselves higher than organic results.

How will this affect user behaviour on the search engine?

Google holds a great deal of power in influencing the behaviour of web users and this move does seem to demonstrate that buying into advertising will place you higher than sites that are well optimised and offer rich content. The biggest fear in this move is that the user will sign up for one of the sponsored services based on the tables that Google provides, without full research of what they may be getting themselves into.

However, will the majority of people simply ignore the paid search and sponsored ads, instead scrolling down to view the organic listings? A 2011 eye-tracking study by User Centric showed that participants averaged around 14.7 seconds looking at organic search results, whilst only 28% actually spent just a second looking at PPC results, with the rest ignoring the paid search results entirely. So it’s more than possible that searchers will be equally dismissive of the sponsored results.

Will this change really affect the way we search? Will other comparison sites see a major drop in traffic as they are ousted by Google’s sponsored results, and abandon their SEO efforts as Google strive to become everything to everyone? It’s likely that Google has identified and opened up new avenues for receiving revenue from financial companies for itself; however as a result of this has it diluted the effectiveness  of, and therefore the demand for traditional paid listings for the highly competitive key terms against which it is also running sponsored results?

This is the current state of what has come to be known as ‘frictionless sharing’ – ie, “real-time serendipity in a friction-less experience” whereby users share resources without actually having to click a ‘share’ button because the app automatically shares on their behalf, often without the user actually realising.

Now, there are two options when it comes to frictionless sharing – you could either log into the app and allow it to share on your behalf every time you read an article or watch a video on the app site… or you could leave Facebook and the app and simply search Google for the story headline thereby avoiding frictionless sharing.

The Oatmeal has adequately advocated that the most likely reason for people abandoning Facebook reader apps in favour of a simple search that doesn’t inform all of your friends or force you to jump through hoops just to read an article is because the simple search does not enforce frictionless sharing

Social content and news site Buzzfeed actually posted some interesting statistics that show the initial promise in social readers but their rapid and significant decline.

But why such a sudden drop? Had people suddenly had enough of being forced through an app to read a free piece of news content?

If we pull back from the graph to a larger timescale, we can actually see a definitive date whereby there was a massive and an unnatural dip, after a relatively steady growth. Josh Constine at Techcrunch.com noticed that the fluctuation occurred when Facebook made the transition to a newer format of trending articles.

If we refer back to the old design, we can see that there are a wide array of alternative stories on offer to encourage further reading and navigating around Facebook, as well as a list of friends that have read the various stories.

However, looking at the new design below…

The articles are spread further apart, accentuated with their own thumbnail, friend portraits have been removed and everything looks less appealing and personal, more akin to the stories seen on mgid.com and other news aggregator sites.

With this, it would appear that Facebook are intending to drive traffic to higher authority articles, valuing quality over quantity. Logically, this is going to lead to a drop in overall traffic, which might not be recoverable to smaller or less popular news sites, causing social reader app developers to question how smart this new layout really is. Engagement Producer for The Washington Post, Ryan Kellett, tweeted that “Social reader “collapse” is b/c of evolving FB modules. Before: “double-double,” 4-5 stories down in a list, w/ friend icon – drove growth.”

However there is an explanation as to why Facebook has made this  move, and it echoes Google’s cracking down on spam – all too often, sites were using blatant link-bait headlines to encourage people to click, whilst the story would offer little actual value, relevancy or truth.

All of this being said does not remove the fact that sharing news stories in such an automatic and involuntary manner is still an unfamiliar concept to users, and feels like another invasion of privacy – on the other hand, could this not prove beneficial to the overall user experience in providing opportunities for discussions and dialogue between different users? Frictionless sharing remains a point of contention and the immediate loading of an app is enough to drive people away, however if enough people adopt the format, it could become the norm.

 After all, people never thought Twitter would catch on!

Now, actually listing everything that the internet has created would require me to type for at least 9 consecutive days, so I will count down my ‘Top 11 Favourite Internet Inventions’ for your delectations. If there’s anything I’ve missed or you disagree with, please leave a comment below!

11. Online Gaming

Okay, okay, I’m a geek. I can’t deny it. I remember trying to play Return to Castle Wolfenstein on a 56K modem and consistently getting shot before I’d even seen enemy players that were lucky enough to have upgraded to broadband. However, when I eventually got the upgrade, a whole new world of possibilities was opened – MMORPGs, competitive first-person-shooters and even complex web-based games became a part of every-day life… and IT lessons at school.

The majority of flash games are created by young animators and appear on sites such as Newgrounds.com and ArmorGames, using software on the Adobe suites ; however more recently, a number of ad agencies have used flash games as part of a marketing campaign to encourage interactivity and promote the product

Well, it’s sort of learning about trigonometry.

Notable Games: World of Warcraft, Counter Strike, Call of Duty, Neopets, Club Penguin, Line Rider

10. Instant Messaging

Hours and hours were spent up into the early morning, plagued by these irritating noises as I waited for a friend to respond to my witty conversations. This is still going strong and shows little hint at ever ceasing, however has been replaced with newer sounds such as this and this.

In its most basic form, instant messaging actually predates the internet, taking advantage of peer-to-peer communication or using the same computer; however in the mid-1990s, services such as ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger took off, closely followed by more popular options such as MSN Messenger.

Notable IM Software/Services: MSN Messenger, Skype, Facebook

9. Memes

For anyone that isn’t totally aware, a meme is an internet ‘in-joke’ often revolving around a humorous video or image, and whilst they’re often driven into the ground through over-use, they’re genuinely funny for a while. Until things like this start to happen…

 Notable memes: LOLcats, FailBlog, Chuck Norris, Dramatic Chipmunk

8. Discussion Forums

Again, another time-vampire of mine, I would spend hours discussing pointless topics on forums and throughout my web browsing history have been a moderator for both the Black & White and Lemon Jelly forums.

Notable forums: Mumsnet, Slashdot, Digitalspy

7. The Blogosphere

Often regarded as the best source of news and opinion, the blogosphere has exploded across the internet, allowing anyone to become a writer, whether it’s for a personal diary of events, journalistic insight or just humour. As well as this, blogs have paved the way for a wide variety of web-comics that have become must-reads on the internet.

One of the first recognised bloggers was Justin Hall, who began his blog titled ‘Justin’s Links from the Underground’ whilst he was a student at Strathmore College – the blog served as a basic portal to interesting sites on the web, and is still continuing strong today.

via XKCD.com

 Notable Blogs/Comics: Hyperbole & A Half, XKCD, SEOMoz, Cracked, Joystiq, Neatorama

6. Online Shopping

I can’t even begin to think how much money I have saved (and spent!) thanks to online shopping – opening payment gateways to shoppers across the world, we can now purchase items without leaving the house and have them delivered by mail. With the advent of digital downloads, we also now have instant gratification and can experience media after a single transaction.

A great deal of their collective successes has also been attributed to the success of secure online payment systems, such as PayPal and Google Checkout – in 2011, the UK spent over £68.2 billion on online shopping, and e-Retail now accounts for 17% of total retail sales in the UK.

Notable online shopping sites: Amazon, eBay, Play

5. Wikipedia

A fountain of (generally-reliable) knowledge, Wikipedia is a user-created encyclopaedia of… well, pretty much everything. Wikipedia ranks highly for a number of search terms now, overtaking the knowledge that may have previously been offered by blogs. The site has also led to a surge in niche/community wikis that deal extensively on a specific subject.

Whilst the actual idea of an online encyclopaedia had been proposed way back in 1993, Wikipedia itself was not formally launched until 2001, to complement Numedia, which was similar but written solely by experts, as opposed to user-created content. Wikipedia currently holds approximately 21.7 million articles across all of its 284 language editions.

Notable wikis: TVTropes, Wookieepedia, Wiktionary, and the controversial WikiLeaks

4. E-mail

The precursor to instant messaging, it’s hard to imagine where we would be without e-mail now. Not only is e-mail a vital tool for communication in business, it’s considered to be one of the strongest methods of advertising. And whilst I may currently have 20,323 unread mail in my personal inbox, I still diligently check it for any updates, offers or correspondences.

Notable e-mail providers/software: Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook

3. YouTube

Ahh, YouTube – this site is the absolute time-wasters dream, and thanks to related videos, you can surf endlessly. Whether it’s compilations of falls, ridiculous infomercials or bizarre Japanese pranks, there is an endless supply of content, a great deal of which has permeated culture and news.

YouTube was created by three ex-PayPal employees back in 2005 and was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion – it has been credited with bringing attention to now-famous acts such as Julia Nunes, James Rolfe, Freddie Wong and, more depressingly, fred. The first uploaded video to the site was titled ‘Me at the Zoo’ and is pretty underwhelming, but we can only imagine the creators had no idea it would become such a phenomenon at the time.

Notable videos: The most watched YouTube video of all time (ears beware), Charlie Bit My Finger, and one of the best SEO videos ever released.

2. Social Media

As much as you might try and avoid it, you can’t ignore the presence of social media. Almost everything is encouraging you to ‘Like’ or discuss it with a #hashtag, and the amount of friendships carried on solely through Facebook is increasing rapidly. At least 27.5% of the population of Europe currently use Facebook, whilst a staggering 50.3% of North America’s population are members of the site.

Notable social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+

1. Search Engines

Widely considered to be the backbone of the internet, search engines are what almost all of us instantly jump to when loading our browsers (though increasingly, Facebook is the homepage of choice). Search engines help to connect us to our desired pages, and in January 2012, there were over 17.8 billion core searches, 11.8 billion of which were on the almighty Google (for a brief explanation of how Google works, please see yesterday’s post).

Notable search engines: Google, Yahoo!, Bing

We shouldn’t also forget that without the internet, Lakestar Media wouldn’t exist, our digital marketing strategies would be mere whispers in the wind and the world would be a much darker place. So, thank you internet, now please stop randomly disconnecting when I’m at home.

The video is a response to RobertVH’s question to Matt Cutts that asked:

“Hi Matt, could you please explain how Google’s ranking and website evaluation process works starting with the crawling and analysis of a site, crawling timelines, frequencies, priorities, indexing and filtering processes within the databases etc.”

RobertvH, Munich

How does Google search work?

As Matt states, this question basically says ‘Tell me everything about Google’. Obviously this could not be summed up in a short video, but the key facets are adequately outlined. There are three key aspects to a successful search engine:

• Crawl the web comprehensively and deeply
• Index the pages
• Rank or serve the pages and return the most relevant ones first

So how does Google crawl the web?

According to Matt, Google takes Page Rank as the primary determinacy as to which site gets the most favour; however we all know that this is a bit of a red herring, as Page Rank (as displayed in the Google Toolbar anyway) is less of an important factor. Heck, Google themselves acknowledged that PageRank is only updated a few times in a year and is just one of over 200 signals in their ranking algorithm.

Previously, Google would crawl for 30 days and index for a week, taking about a week – however this led to mass ‘Google dances’ (fluctuations in rankings). This was later addressed as to be too slow, so in 2003, Google would crawl one segment of the web per day and refresh it on the night, thereby incrementally updating the overall index.

What about indexing?

Indexing is, according to Matt, ‘taking things in word order’ – ie a search for ‘Katy Perry’ will logically provide results to any documents that contain either of those words; however as these are two separate words, the results are likely to be irrelevant. This is where the indexing process comes in.

Thus, “the whole process of doing the index… is that instead of having the documents in word order, you have the words, and they have it in document order”. This essentially allows Google to provide results that adequately match this phrase most appropriately, i.e. any document that contains both ‘Katy’ and ‘Perry’.

How is it all ranked?

Amongst all of the ranking factors previously mentioned, Google determines which document is the most appropriate to show first (or highest). It will look at the overall authority of the document and site, as well as proximity of keywords and the number of backlinks pointing to the page, as well as fresh content and trust.

How does this all work then?

Whenever someone searches Google, it will find the closest data centre, sending out the search query to ‘hundreds of different machines, all at once, which look through their little tiny fraction of the web that we’ve indexed’. The most relevant and appropriate documents are then found, and all machines return the matches, and then rank it according to the chosen algorithmic factors. And all of this in under half a second! Shows how much we take for granted when we’re idly searching for ‘Katy Perry’.

It’s unfortunate that Matt doesn’t go into more detail about the other ranking factors and how the algorithm works; however it’s clear to see why it’s a closely-guarded secret and many people simply strive to game the search engine with guesses and black-hat tactics.

What we do at Lakestar Media isn’t based on guesswork, but experience. We understand what is involved in a long-term marketing strategy and maximise return on investment. And whilst I may have disagreed with what Mr Cutts has been involved with in the past, it’s certainly appreciated to see him offering some insight and interaction with the web community.

…Not really sure how necessary that whiteboard was though.

In yet another panic, we’ve already seen frantic bloggers and forum posts declaring that ‘SEO is dead’ and the sky is falling, all the while peddling their latest fool-proof strategies.

When Panda first hit last year, the first thing we saw was the death of content-farms – sites dependent on masses of articles that offered little of interest to the reader, other than to fuel links, and the gradual removal of spammy sites from search results.

However, this time, Google is going after sites that have over-optimised themselves with aggressive and unnatural SEO.

So what’s changed?

Whilst Google is keeping tight-lipped about the actual signals that will determine how a site is assessed as they “don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users”, it’s clear that the original factors remain the same.

Poor quality, nonsensical and spun content, unnatural link schemes, and keyword stuffing remain ineffective long-term strategies to rank your site, no matter the quantity at which you power them. Essentially, simply by looking at an unnatural profile, Google has been able to manually assess the validity of the site – and with the latest update, intend for the algorithm to mimic this process.

What does this all mean?

Whilst this will only currently affect 3% of search queries, this is undoubtedly a sign of things to come; however with the recent de-indexation of popular public blog networks by previous algorithm updates, there is a feeling of fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding this in the SEO community.

The solution

Just as it always has been, the only true, long-term way to ensure your site performs well is to create compelling content, and produce websites that are optimised for the user experience, not just for search engines.

Link promotion is critical, but balance, naturalness and brand building are key for sustanined success.

Are you worried about over-optimisation on your website?

Continuing in the same vein as the previous blog post on social signals, this thumbnail and author name actually creates its own ‘Author Rank’ which Google will use when prioritising search results– clearly strengthened by its associations with the struggling Google+ social network. And this isn’t just some speculative factor – we’ve known about the “rel=author” tag for a while now, and as Google has stated in its patent for this:

“The name of the writer can be used to influence the ranking of web search results by indicating the writer responsible for a particular content piece…Assuming that a given writer has a high reputational score, representing an established reputation for authoring valuable content, then additional content authored and signed by that writer will be promoted relative to unsigned content or content from less reputable writers in search results.”

This all makes perfect sense really, as you’re more likely to trust someone who has a record of supplying high quality content, such as Aaron Wall or Barry Schwartz, over a faceless nobody – it’s the same reason we trust familiar faces. In effect, Google is rewarding internet author celebrities. I’m hardly going to be spotted in a crowd as the Lakestar Media blog author, but maybe one day…

It all comes back to the same process that we follow to a T here at Lakestar Media – write great content, share it with the world, then write some more. Author rank could make all the difference when writing a niche post, as well as instilling company trust and confidence in what the writer is saying, and all it takes is linking it to Google+!

Does this mean then that Google+ is of far more importance than others think – is a +1 more influential than a like or a re-tweet? Obviously, the higher number of Google users that share their content within circles, the greater reach it will have, but is this a widely recognised process? Google certainly wants it to become so.

Whilst Google largely influences the strategies of the internet, it is the combined efforts of users and publishers that will shape what the future holds, and now is a more important time than ever to establish yourself as a quality author and in effect, your own ranking factor.

Well, if a close friend recommended a coffee shop to you, then the chances are that you are going to visit it as a preference – and this is essentially the crux of the matter. Google has recognised that search results can be gamed by aggressive and black-hat link building tactics and is constantly fighting to stop this, which has thus led to an increasing reliance in social signals.

So, what are social signals?

A social signal could be anything from +1 from a Google account, a Facebook ‘Like’, an influx of followers, re-tweets, online reviews, ratings or anything that would increase online presence on social networks and promote brand trust.

Even when I want to purchase a small bit of furniture, I’ll check up online reviews and these will prove a large influencing factor on my final decision. Randall Munroe of XKCD has aptly demonstrated how online shopping reviews have changed the way we shop.

So really, in a perfect world, this would be the ideal way to categorise search results as it effectively negates any effects that spam could have. However, this has inevitably led to companies offering ‘less-than-legitimate’ services by selling these social signals – and it’s easy to see why; you just get a massive network of people signed up to the network and they can automatically act as influencers.

However, this now means that the results can be gamed even more than ever – you could be searching for an exercise bike and one of the top results has a 5-star rating and hundreds of +1’s – instantly, you’d think that this would be a great product. You purchase it, content with your purchase but after one hour it completely falls apart and you think to yourself, “…but, the reviews said it was good!”

So what’s to stop this happening? Well, if Google really does place higher value on social signals, then nothing! Originally, Google’s algorithm took into account the content that was linking back to the site and the quality of these sites that are providing these links – obviously this has the potential to be gamed, but with the mighty Panda stomping its paws, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to trick the system.

With personalised search becoming the next big thing to rock the world of SEO, it’s logical that there would be a greater importance placed on social media; however distinguishing between legitimate and bought social recommendations is going to be a tough move for Google.

As Chris Crum of WebProNews stated, “SEO is still a factor, but it’s not the only factor. In fact, social is a factor of that factor.”

We at Lakestar Media recognised that social media is of utmost important for an effective digital marketing campaign and, with a genuine strategy borne out of customer-interaction and natural public relations, will be a key influencer and inevitably build confidence in every business.