Google Buzz aggregates data from Twitter, Picasa, Google Reader, YouTube, Flickr and even your Google chat status. Facebook is currently missing from this list, but Google have announced that it’s not completely out of the question. Google Buzz automatically follows the contacts you email and chat to most frequently and photos, videos and links can be integrated into each Buzz message. There appears to be no limit to the number of characters within each message, so you no longer have to shorten your updates, or resort to textspeak, to fit within the 140 character limit.

Google Buzz connects with Picasa Web Albums and photos can be added directly to a Buzz message, either uploaded from your computer or selected from one of your existing Picasa albums. All photos added to a Buzz message are stored in your Picasa account and count toward your storage limit. As photos are shown inline with your Buzz message there’s no need to follow a link to a 3rd party site to view photos as is the case with Twitter. Adding public photos to your Picasa account will create a new Buzz message displaying the recently added photos that can then be viewed using the inbuilt full-screen viewer.

Posts and replies on Twitter are separate entries, which makes it hard to follow a conversation. Google Buzz has solved this by allowing comments directly onto the original post, overcoming the need for a separate reply. Google have also added a “like” button to each post, which is very similar to the Facebook feature added in February 2009.

The mobile version of Google Buzz allows you to tag your Buzz message with your current location. You are able to select actual places, like bars and restaurants, not just an address or a lat/long location. It is also possible to read Buzz from other people in and around the same location as yourself to discover what’s happening around you. Google also have plans to roll out a standalone version of Buzz outside of Gmail.

Already, there have been privacy concerns regarding Google Buzz. When your first enter Buzz, it automatically follows the people your most frequently email and chat to and by default this list and the list of people who follow you, are made public, so anyone can see who you most frequently email and chat to. In response to this, Google have made changes to the setup procedure so that instead of auto-following the people you most frequently contacted, you are presented with a list that you can review and confirm before continuing. Also, the option not to show who you follow and who follows you on your profile has been made more prominent, but these lists are still displayed by default.

The uptake of Google Buzz has been surprising to say the least. On February 11^th, 2 days after launching Buzz, Google announced that “tens of millions of people have checked Buzz out, creating over 9 million posts and comments. Plus, we’re seeing over 200 posts per minute from mobile phones around the world.” This is amazing considering that it was rolled out slowly.

Overall, Google Buzz is great product, it has taken the successful Twitter model, updated and expanded it and incorporated it right into Gmail and onto mobile. I don’t believe Google Buzz will pull current users away from Twitter or Facebook just yet. It may, however, entice new users who haven’t yet joined Facebook or Twitter, into micro-blogging as they do not have to sign up for a new account, join another service or get used to a new and unfamiliar interface as they can start “Buzzing” from their current Gmail account.

What most people knew was that “real time” search results was an enhancement to Google Universal, where Google had teamed up with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca; and provided real time search results amongst it’s various other Universal search products. To get an idea of how this works, check out Search Engine Roundtable’s “Google Does Real Time Search: See It For Popeye” blog post; it clearly illustrates what Google’s SERPs look like with real time results.

Moving on from what we all know so far about Google Real Time Search, I wanted to discuss the next steps in Google’s evolution of real time search. What does Google count as current and relevant news; and how will the results be ranked naturally? I might actually have more questions than answers right now, but its food for thought?

Let’s look at what is considered “real time news”… Google states that “Our real-time search enables you to discover breaking news the moment it’s happening, even if it’s not the popular news of the day, and even if you didn’t know about it beforehand.”  So based on how Google explains the mechanism behind getting ‘real time’ news, the search results should be updated quite frequently on ‘hot topics’ that happen around the world.

For example,  playing around with searches around the Grammy Awards (which happened last week), Google SERPs bring up ’New Results’ at the top, ‘Latest Results for grammy awards’ (see) below) after the 3rd organic result, and ‘Video Results’ at the bottom of the page.

The “Latest results for grammy awards” section of the SERPs includes some interesting updates that reflect both positive and negative Twitter posts as well as latest press releases:

Considering the volume of posts on hot topics (such as the Grammy Awards), companies may have concerns their brand reputation could be tarnished by real time search in the blink of an eye. However, my perspective is that this only emphasizes the need for brands to embrace social media and engage with their consumers and their conversations, so that brand reputation can be managed more effectively. The main point of difference with Google’s Real Time Search results is that it centralises conversations from various social media platforms through one search platform.

Going back to the question about how Google manages to keep its real time search results relevant and only pick up on conversations that are worth displaying –one of Google’s guys, Amit Singhal, mentions that, similar to how Google adapted a page-ranking technology to retrieve relevant web pages in traditional web search, with tweets, the relevance of posts for real time search is built from the ‘reputed followers’. So put it in the words of Amit Singhal.

“You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone–then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers,” his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widely.”
Source: http://www.technologyreview.com

Essentially, I gather that the tweets are valued on how reputable the Tweeple is, based on their followers and followings. It sounds like a popularity vote, but Google goes on to state that its much like how they value link popularity and its not about quantity but more the quality of the followers and followings. On top of all this, Google’s social ranking algorithm uses other filters to ensure its real time search results are as “spam-free” as possible.

In short, the introduction of real-time search to Google was inevitable based on how fast social media is growing; and the way the results are displayed in the “Latest news” section of the SERPs is a reflection of the reputation of the social media user. This ultimately means that brands and individuals need to pay more attention to their customers and the online conversation in conjunction with any other online marketing pursuits, to ensure they really do “Own the Digital Shelf”.

There are two ways to target paid search ads to consumers using mobiles:

1. Users on WAP-enabled mobile phones (eg BlackBerry and the host of internet-enabled standard handsets)

2. Users on smart phones with full internet browsers (eg iPhone)

Given WAPs stabilisation &/or decline I’m going to focus on high-end devices with a full web browser.

Your AdWords campaign automatically opts you in to target mobile devices with full browsers, however there are some key differences in the ads being displayed:

• Mobile device search results show 2 paid ads at the top of the page, followed by approximately 10 organic results & snippets, followed by 2 to 3 paid ads at the bottom.
• If you utilise the full character limit allowed (the same as desktop search), your ad will actually fit over 4 lines rather than 3, hence pushing your competitors further down the page.

Given a rank of 1 – 2 is much more critical on a mobile platform to ensure visibility and share of voice, slightly different optimisation techniques should be applied.  We recommend setting up a unique campaign targeting the mobile platforms, which enables you to employ the most appropriate optimisation strategies, utilise your creative character limits, send consumers to a mobile-device-friendly landing page (WAP or no flash!), and also importantly target your creative message to consumers on the move.

Whilst search volumes on mobile devices are still small (less than 1% of desktop from the data we’ve seen), they are growing.  Google Australia has outlined some impressive growth charts over the recent Christmas period.  Now we can only wait for telco providers to make data plans more accessible, and search will be revolutionised!

Oh, and if you are targeting mobile devices from the one Google AdWords campaign you can now see a breakdown of traffic by device (desktop v. mobile); go to Filters and views > Segment by > Device.

Google Webmaster tools have been reporting sample data from sites that have page speed issues (you can find this in the Labs section under Site Performance). Within Google Webmaster it also suggests the supplied Page Speed Firefox plug-in (installs as part of Firebug) should be used to get more accurate and full data. This has been available since July 2009 so I guess we have had plenty of notice. This is already in play for AdWords where page speed will affect your quality score.

This tools reports in the order of priorities – which things are slowing the pages the most and also gives a suggested size savings if recommendations are carried out and, I mean, recommendations. It tells you specifically what files are problematic, which images should be attended to, which JavaScript files can be combined, which CSS definitions (within an include file) aren’t being used and can be excluded, DNS look-ups, browser caching and more.

Google introduced this idea of page speed officially in their blog in June 2009.

Not surprisingly it has been written up on many sites. Webpronews covered this in November 2009.

The goal here is to make the internet faster and improve the user experience. In turn, it is very likely that this will also improve traffic and conversions. Here’s an excerpt:

“If you’re serious about wanting your site to perform better in search engines, and you haven’t given much thought to load times and such, it’s time to readjust your way of thinking.”

Of course there is going to be debate about this within the industry, with marketers and developers. It’s just a new little layer to make our jobs a little more challenging.

At this stage the Caffeine update has yet to roll out. The last update Matt Cutts posted can be found here: Expect Caffeine after the holidays.

Here are some other sites to read up on this:

Google Page Speed Report Comes to Webmaster Tools
Site Speed Google’s Next Ranking Factor
Google Wants the Web to Function like a Magazine
WebPerformance Best Practices
Should Web Page Speed Influence Google PageRank?

Imagine if that was your nightly routine, the ability to search for anything, anytime, at an unprecedented level of integration with day to day life without the aid of what we accept to be the ‘personal computer’. The future holds many promises and many concerns but ultimately technology is designed to make our life and needs easier.

Search engines are notoriously predictable, if something is hyped up on the TV or through a social site you can bet there is likely to be a presence on the front page of search engines pretty quickly. Google has attempted to provide a personalised search option but to much avail. According to www.readwriteweb.com 57% of respondents said there was very little difference or actually a noticeably worse set of results returned while personalised search was enabled.

Although personalised search is a burden on the SEO community, skewing the true results that we so dearly relay on being transparent and exact, the future is likely to force us in new directions.

Providing search engine optimisation services for personalised search would make the way we work very different. The need to provide inbound links, which many search engines value so highly, may take a backwards step for other factors push through the field and take front line. Social media buzz is likely to become a valuable asset in the SEO specialist’s arsenal to spread the word and create a buzz about a new product; the voice of many is a powerful asset.

True personalised search would require a new level of integration with technology and users alike, think Minority Report. Each and every person is an individual with likes and dislikes in style, culture and influence and aggregating the most visited sites into one set of top results wouldn’t be suitable, serving up the same web pages time and time again would likely allow the giants to dominate the market.

Providing results based on what a user talked about that day or which colour their eyes focussed on the most would allow new avenues or markets to emerge and flourish amongst the giants.

Technology such as Microsoft Surface could be a portal into a world where interacting with technology is treated as a user defined experience not a set game plan with varying results. Search engines may not change, they will always be here but they must adapt to the way users interact.

They better hurry though the future isn’t as far away as we think…

Industry thinking is that not only will the Google breadcrumb trails enhance the user experience but they will provide an increase in click through rates for site owners, as users will be given more information about their search query which may in turn influence where they click.

For example, traditional URLs appear as “/selling-your-bike-on-ebay/” where keywords entered by the users search query are bolded (as shown below).

The new Google breadcrumb feature will replace traditional URLs with “> Buy > Cars, Bikes, Boats > Trailers >” providing direct links to parent pages or sections, further increasing the number of entry points to a website (as shown below).

Google announced the new “user enhanced” display on 18 November 2009 in a blog post, which outlines the objective in providing clearer navigational options for users arriving at a website via Google search.

When Google decides the breadcrumb feature will enhance the users’ experience, clickable trail links that reflect the website hierarchy will appear. The new feature provides users with information about the physical location of a webpage relative to the site as a whole, allowing them to backtrack if required.

The Google Blog states: “By analysing site breadcrumbs, we’ve been able to improve the search snippet for a small percentage of search results, and we hope to expand in the future.”

What do you think? Will the new Google breadcrumb feature help click through rates?

Hence, the cliche of “a picture speaks a thousand words” is definitely true in this case, especially in the world of Search and Social Media. So I decided to share some of these cool Infographics with you and to show how powerful they can be for SEO.

This was definitely at the top of my list for the best Infographics. The whole idea of simplifying an incredibly complex situation such as the credit crunch was illustrated incredibly well. Not only did this allow people to understand what really happened with the current credit crisis, but the use of pictures, and a well deployed Vimeo video, helped create a viral marketing spin on the whole thing. From an SEO perspective, the hub website, www.crisisofcredit.com, gained more than 18,500 links within 8 months and the Vimeo video gained 2.1 million views. In addition, iIf you also look at the SERPs for “the crisis of credit”, you’ll see that the 6 out of 10 results are all surrounding this original infographic, which is a great example of dominating the search engine results.

The next on my list of favourite infographics, is the image below.

This image metaphorically illustrates the complex world of social media that creates a busy city of communities, such as Youtube, Google, Digg and so forth. The original image was created by eBoy; but this image has been used by many other bloggers to visualise the essence of Social Media.

The third infographic which stood out of the crowd was the “If You Printed The Internet” image, as seen below. This is a simple, yet logical way to demonstrate the immense growth of the Internet. Looking at the blog post through the eyes of SEO, this innovative image is a creative way to gain links naturally. To prove its effectiveness, the image has over 175,000 links since the post was created.

Let’s move on to some more complex diagrams that have been successful from a linking building perspective. The next image on the list of cool infographics is Left vs Right World. It looks quite detailed and discusses the Left & Right parties of Government in regards to their regulations. I guess if we were to put this image into legal jargon, it would be near impossible for the general public to understand.. Beyond it’s intricate detail, this image alone has gained over 30,000 links over a span of 2 months. This just shows the effectiveness of link baiting strategies that use visual aids such as infographics.

The image below takes a more scientific visualisation of how people utilise their day with various activities. The great thing about this Flash image is that you can manipulate the different factors to see how the daily routine changes for different demographics. The New York Times also gained over 500 links for this post.

Well the next image is something that most people can relate to, coffee. Everyone likes their coffee made differently; hence there are so many types to choose from, such as Latte, Cappuccino, Flat White and Macchiato. Well the image below shows how some of these coffee types are made and how to articulate their names. It seemed appropriate to bring this image up, not only for its clever use of imagery, but also to show how a simple concept can generate so much interest. The blog post and infographic gained 408 comments over 2 months and 50,000 links to the whole blog site.

Finally, the last of the infographics that made my short list was the “Billion Dollar Gram”. The image is blatantly obvious; it’s trying to show how the economy spends, earns, gives and tightens its liquidity. I personally would say this is not the prettiest of infographics, but definitely gets the point across through one picture.

In conclusion, the above set of infographic examples are only some of many that I happened to come across. It appears more and more common for bloggers and social networks to use images and videos to explain either a simple or complex concept. Not only do these images seem a lot more pleasant to the eye, they also have a lot of traction to gain links and user generated feedback. This natural link building exercise plays an important role in SEO to help build relevant links back to the hub website and improve the visibility of the brand. This is something to then consider for a lot of brands.

Some countries, such as China and Thailand, have already introduced workarounds that allow computer users to enter web addresses in their own language. However, these were not internationally approved and do not work on all computers. Support for 100,000 international characters would make traditional keyboards insufficient input devices for accessing the entire Internet.

The impact of this change on the SEO industry has the potential to be significantly concerning, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. The change shouldn’t affect search campaigns where a site owner is solely interested in Australian traffic, however it may add an extra layer of complexity to strategies if a website is trying to capture traffic from the countries that end up embracing IDNs.

One of the most talked about concerns with IDNs is the new angle that will be made available to scammers and fraudsters. Phishing is a form of Internet fraud that aims to steal valuable information such as credit cards, social security numbers, user IDs and passwords from unsuspecting internet users. Anti-Phishing Working Group reported this month that non-Latin characters could help phishers spoof legitimate websites with similar characters. For example, a phishing website set up to mimic the online payment website paypal.com could use a Cyrillic “a” instead of an ASCII “a,” making it a technically different web address but similar enough to fool users. So far at least, phishers have not been using such tricks at a high frequency, but the proliferation of new international web addresses could present the opportunity. Site security factors heavily in search engine ranking algorithms, and this may become an even more important factor as malware injections become more feasible.

The ICANN has stated on their website that ccTLDs (country code top level domains eg. com.au for Australia) will be available to the governments of countries who wish to use languages based on scripts other than Latin. This is significant as it’s generally agreed that having a local ccTLD will have a positive impact in search engine rankings in that country.

In order to attain strong rankings in a particular region, not only is it important that your content targets that region in the correct language, but also link building strategies should be conducted in the target language. It is likely that this change will cause the internet to become more highly segregated, and websites utilising new IDNs will not (initially at least) have as many natural linking sources as other latin-character based websites.

Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics are two great resources for webmasters to track diagnostic issues and monitor user activity on your site, but whether Google opens their services up to non-latin character based websites remains to be seen.

We would love to hear others thoughts on this change – how do you feel it will impact on search, or the web in general?

Resources:
http://www.icann.org
http://en.wikipedia.org
http://searchengineland.com
http://www.ethioplanet.com
http://www.internetnews.com

For those who don’t know much about Search Engine Bootcamp; it’s a series of Search related conferences held across Australia and internationally to educate businesses, individuals and pretty much anyone who wants to know about SEO, Pay-Per-Click and more recently Social Media, such as Twitter. The founder of Search Strategies, Barry Smith, also runs annual Search Marketing Expos (SMX), with the next one coming up in April 2010.

Back to telling you a little bit about Bootcamp Sydney and some of the topics discuss throughout the afternoon:

Session #1: What is SEO and understanding the basics of what works and what doesn’t

This session was really to get the audience interested in the whole concept of Search Engine Optimisation. It started off with…

All in all, the first session was quite insightful to people who knew little of SEO.

Session #2: The three key pillars of SEO success – Keywords, Content & Linking

Now we move onto the second session which went into more details of the three core factors of SEO.

Session #3: Search Engine Site Clinic

To end the whole conference was the infamous Site Clinic done by Mike Motherwell from MMS Consulting. This has always been a great way to conclude Search Strategy conferences, where the audience can get some insightful SEO tips about their websites. Mike as usual made the final session as fun and to the point!

All in all, the conference was great to attend and a good way to get to know SEO on a 101 basis.

To put the whole study into a little more perspective, GroupM and the team looked at the background and opportunities between Social Media and Search to identify synergies. The plan was to explore:

• When consumers are exposed to social media and influenced social media, are they more likely to search, and, when they do, more likely to engage?

• Does social media exposure influence search behaviour by driving search queries further down the purchase funnel where consumers are more likely to convert?

• Is there a synergy between influenced social media and search marketing that drives better performance than search only?

Based on these explorations, some of the key findings discovered were as follows:

• Consumers who are exposed to brands influenced by social media and paid search advertising are 2.8x more likely to search for that brand’s products in comparison to users who only saw the brand through paid search.

• 50% CTR increase for paid search when consumers were exposed to influenced social media and paid search.

• Searches related to a brand’s product name saw a CTR increase from 4.5% to 11.8% when users were exposed to both influenced social media and paid search around a brand.

• In organic search, consumers searching for a brand related keyword, who also has exposure through a branded social marketing campaign, are 2.4x more likely to click on organic result.

• Consumers exposed to both a brand’s influenced social media and paid search, spent almost 3x more time online than the average consumer.

However, one of the primary findings the study revealed is that social media expo¬sure is correlated with lower-funnel search behaviour.

In addition to these key findings, there are additional results discovered through this study. If you want to check out the whole research, visit our Outrider US blog, SearchFuel, where you can download the Interplay of Influenced Social Media and Search white paper.

Finally, I thought I’d end with a quote taken from the study.

“It is this ability to influence discovery that signals the single largest shift in how brands and consumers will engage going forward, and represents a significant opportunity for brands to play an active, but natural role in the social space.”