Search Engine Marketing Blog

Did you think Google Buzz's critics were just users? Well, no. American's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Pamela Jones Harbour has just said Google showed an “irresponsible conduct.” Because of this Google and other online companies may face tougher penalties if they don’t do a better job of protecting consumer privacy, she said.

In an article published by PC World, Jones Harbour talked really strong against the giant search engine (and now social media):

“Google consistently tells the public to ‘just trust us,’” she said. “But based on my observations, I do not believe consumer privacy played any significant role in the release of Buzz.”

A reasonable consumer would conclude that the launch of Buzz was a “material change” their relationship with Google’s Gmail, she said. “When users created Gmail accounts, they signed up for e-mail services,” she said. “Their expectations did not include social networking.”

As you may know, Buzz faced hard criticism since it was launched last February 9th, because it connected people by default without their concern and other problematic privacy stuff. Google apologized and introduced changes to Buzz's privacy default settings. However, the FTC said:

“I would like to see the commission take the position of intolerance toward companies that push the privacy envelop, then backtrack and modify their offerings after facing consumer and regulator backlash.”

Imagine you can find and be found anywhere on the web. Not just on Google. Not just on Bing. Not just on Yahoo. Not just on Twitter Search. Not just on search engines at all!

That's @anywhere, a new tool Twitter is developing to allow webmasters insert twitter on their websites and interact with their users without leaving the website.

"Our open technology platform is well known and Twitter APIs are already widely implemented but this is a different approach because we’ve created something incredibly simple. Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript." This is how Twitter's @Biz describes the new feature on Twitter's blog.

He adds, "when we're ready to launch, initial participating sites will include Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube."

He says that with @anywhere "web site owners and operators will be able to offer visitors more value with less heavy lifting."

Now, what do you think? Will it be useful? Would you insert the java code into your website?

Have you ever tried to share something with your friends through Google Reader and noted they didn't know they could have "feeding" information? Did you notice those who are interested in the same content you get through your RSS reader are not interested in taking the time to set the Reader up?

Google's noticed this, and they are trying now to engage even those who are interested in the content but who barely rub the tool that brings it. How? They are testing a new tool called Reader Play, which allows user to have a "Reader experience" without setting up a Google Reader account. And for Reader's users it is, of course, a new way to view their feeds.

Items are presented one at a time, and each item is big and full-screen. After you've read an item, just click the next arrow to move to the next one, or click any item on the filmstrip below to fast-forward. You can click the title or image of any item to go to the original version. It will open in a new tab.

As you browse, you can teach the tool which stuff you enjoy by clicking the "like" button, and it'll use that info to show you more items it thinks you'll like. You can also choose categories, and it'll personalize your stream to only show you stuff from those categories. What's cool about this tool is you don't even need a Google account to use Reader Play. However, if you want to star, like, or share items, you need to sign in. Since Reader and Reader Play share the same infrastructure, any actions you take in one will be reflected in the other.

Reader Play uses the same technology as the Recommended Items feed in Reader to identify and aggregate the most interesting items on the web. In addition, if you sign in Reader Play will also be personalized with items that people you’re following have shared in Google Reader, and items similar to ones you’ve previously liked, starred, or shared.

Since Reader Play is an experiment, it’s launching in Google Labs for now. If you are on Reader and you want to turn the Play on, you can switch to this view by clicking "View in Reader Play" from the feed settings menu.

What I didn't like of this feature is that I tried to share content directly from the share button and it didn't work. I guess they need to improve this and some more stuff before the tool be graduated from the Labs.

Meanwhile, give the Play a try here.

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According to comScore Video Metrix, nearly 173 million U.S. Internet users watched 32.4 billion videos in January 2010. That means an average of 187 videos per viewer during the month.

135.4 million viewers watched 12.7 billion videos on Google's YouTube, which is an average of 93.4 videos per viewer. It also represents an increase of 50 percent versus year ago.

Now, with these numbers, what could be the Google's next step? How can they exploit these stats? Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, Google is testing a new TV programming search service with Dish Network. They are trying to combine the Internet with traditional TV:

"The service—which runs on TV set-top boxes using elements of Google’s Android operating system—allows users to search content from Dish as well as other Web video, like YouTube, and to personalize a lineup of shows, according to these people.

Viewers can search by typing on a keyboard, instead of using a remote control. Google hopes to link the service up with its nascent TV ad-brokering business, allowing it to target ads to individual households based on viewing and TV search data."

In a recent survey of US new TV buyers iSuppli found that 27 percent of TVs were connected to the internet, as published by SearchEngineLand:

Going back to comScore's survey, here are several rankings which could give a clear picture of the media market right now:

SEO world is not limited to Fulltraffic's packages or key terms. SEO involves everything you can do by yourself to keep your website on top of the results lists in every search engine.

By doing so, you ensure a reasonable ammount of traffic to your website, beyond Fulltraffic's help. This includes involving in social media, keeping up to date with news and making a great design for your website, etc.

Having a great design and providing a great service for your reader makes your website a reference, a place where people would love to come back.

Now Google has introduced a new feature to its search engine that rewards your efforts towards loyalty - stars. The new element allows readers to "star" a website on the results list, so that the next time they perform a search, that item will appear in a special list right at the top of their results when relevant.

That means if they star the official websites for SEO, they might see those results right at the top of their next search for [SEO]. Here's what the new "Starred results" feature looks like:

What's cool about stars is that you don't have to keep track of them. You don't even have to remember whether or not you starred something. When you perform a search you'll just rediscover your starred items right when you need them.

In addition, stars sync with Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar. That means that if you want to see your list of starred items and easily them, you can. Even beyond the results page, while browsing the web you can quickly click the star icon in Toolbar to create a bookmark, and those pages will start showing up in the new stars feature.

According to Google, stars in search replace SearchWiki. "In our testing, we learned that people really liked the idea of marking a website for future reference, but they didn't like changing the order of Google's organic search results. With stars, we've created a lightweight and flexible way for people to mark and rediscover web content. For people who like annotations, we have Sidewiki, a more powerful way for people to contribute and discover helpful information next to pages across the Internet. All your existing SearchWiki edits will be preserved with your Google Account."
 

The new feature was implemented last week and it should be available globally for all signed-in users.

Yahoo!, one of the world giant internet companies, has turned 15 yesterday, and they are celebrating with some hits that could keep the company on the top and growing.

Yesterday we talked about a painful hit Yahoo got from Google, which bought the Yahoo's default photo editor Picnik in favor of Google's Picasa. But that was after a much bigger Yahoo shot, which made a deal with Microsoft to compete with Google's search engine.

So what now? First of all, they became the default search engine on the new Motorola Backflip, AT&T’s first phone using the Google's Android operating system.

According to Search Engine Land, a Yahoo spokesperson said to them:

"We are happy that AT&T has chosen Yahoo! Search as the default mobile search service on the Motorola Backflip, AT&T’s first Android device. We have a long-standing relationship with AT&T and more than 80 carrier partnerships around the world for our award-winning mobile search experience. Mobile is a key corporate priority for Yahoo! and we are focused on making our personally relevant mobile Internet services, like search, available to the broadest audience possible on the widest range of devices."

Second, Yahoo's Ivan Davtchev unveiled yesterday at the SMX West Yahoo's answer to Google's Trends - TimeSense. According to Davtchev, the main differences with Google's tool are:

• TimeSense uses language modeling to determine what queries are relevant to “right now”
• TimeSense is better at identifying long-tail queries, whereas Google Trends is good at identifying “head” queries

However, the tool is not publicly available yet, and it may be somewhere in the future.

Yahoo was founded on March 1, 1995. Jerry Yang and David Filo posted about their start:

"We've had the unique opportunity to help create an industry and shape the online world, and will continue to focus on the values that brought us here --working hard, having fun, being passionate about your ideas, believing in each other, and always trying to invent the future. And as we celebrate 15 years today, we are even more excited than ever about what lies ahead, and the potential of Yahoo! and the Internet. Of course, we didn't set out to start one of the world's largest Internet companies or be leading a movement that has changed the world. We were just a couple of Stanford graduate students doing our research (supposedly) while our professor was on sabbatical."

If you had bought in at the opening $24.50 per stock back then and kept it through until today, you would have 24 shares for each initial one. So you would have $377.52 as of close of trading today - given the current value of $15.73, a little over 15 times your initial investment.

A few weeks after Microsoft-Yahoo deal was announced, Google has acquired Picnik, the popular and fast growing online photo editor. Interestingly, this service is the default editor tool for Yahoo's Flickr. Can we speak of a Google counter-attack?

Well, it is certainly not a "heart counter-attack", since it doesn't directly affect the companies' main product - search engine. However, it could definitely be read as a signal, as a territory marking, as a reminding from the huge Google - we are still here and we are still very powerful.

Picnik is cloud-based and in addition to Flickr, it is integrated directly into SmugMug and other photo repositories. It works directly with online photo libraries like Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa Web Albums. Users can also upload files to the service and download them again when they are done, after a few clicks.

Is is quite early to think that Google may use Picnik to enhance Picasa's usage while hurting Flickr's one, however, that option sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

Neither the ammount nor the terms & conds of the deal were revealed, but Picnik employee Virginia said in an official blogspot that the Seattle-based, 20 employees startup can now "think big". The announcement comes just a few days after another major milestone at Picnik, with the company announcing that it had surpassed more than one billion images edited on the site.

On the Google side, last month they acquired Aardvark, a social search engine and mobile Web email service reMail. Since September, Google has acquired 8 companies, and they've promised they will acquire one small company a month, and they will do a major deal once a year or every two years.

According to Picnik, "Google processes petabytes of data every day, and with their worldwide infrastructure and world-class team, it is truly the best home we could have found. Under the Google roof we’ll reach more people than ever before, impacting more lives and making more photos more awesome".

So what does this deal mean for users. Both Google and Picnik say that nothing by now, though Google said they'll be "working hard on integration and new features".

The editing capabilities Picnik offers are a natural complement to a Picasa, even though Picnik works in Flash, while most advanced Google apps use the slower JavaScript.

It is already a matter of fact that localization is the next thing in SEO world. Mobiles' and apps' influence is felt in the online space, so much the biggest companies are taking much care of it. See, for example, this blogpost and this one too.

The last release was Google's, which added the ability to refine your searches with the "Nearby" tool in the Search Options panel.

This tool works geographically — not just with keywords. What does this mean? That you don't have to worry about adding "Minneapolis" to your query and missing webpages that only say "St. Paul" or "Twin Cities."

Check it out by doing a search, clicking on "show options" and selecting "Nearby."

So you should take seriously this new online reality. Either if you have a global webpage or a localized one, the potential is huge. Imagine you purchase one of Fulltraffic's localized packages and you enhance your local presence. Not just that, now Google will put you into the "nearby" options. This means, if you have a high Fulltraffic's traffic you will get the first spots and then even more results!

Things are going on your behalf, dude!

We've largely discussed news about Twitter lastly... and here's another one! We couldn't let it go, since it may be one of the most important deals of the year - a Twitter - Yahoo! deal.

Some weeks ago, Google's search engine started to show tweets on its results list, as an effort to make them real-time relevant. Now Twitter wants to cover a broader piece of the market, and they signed an agreement with Yahoo!, that holds 600 million daily users!

According to Twitter's blog, "Yahoo! will receive what has been dubbed "Firehose"—a full feed of public tweets sent to Twitter and our partners every second of every day from all around the world".

Through this arrangement, people will be able to find relevant tweets in Yahoo! Search as well as other popular products and properties, including the Yahoo! Homepage, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sports, and more. Yahoo! will also be able to build unique Twitter clients into their properties making it easier for folks to tweet wherever they feel comfortable within the Yahoo! network.

Now, with recent Microsoft-Yahoo! deal, we think it is a matter of time Twitter results start to show up on Microsoft's Bing too.

So, once again, you get more reasons to have a strong presence on Twitter. Remember, the more you tweet, the more you will be searchable for engines' spiders. Imagine your website shows off on a tweet inside Google's or Bing's or Yahoo!'s search engines' results? That's augmented potential! So if you don't have a Twitter account yet, go and open one. And if you already do, go and tweet more. We will do the rest.