Google in the US last week has introduced its latest experiment of the “+1” (plus one) button as part of Google search results. This allows you to see or apply a “+1” to the Organic Search results or Paid Search ads. This is not available on websites, yet.

This new feature basically helps you identify which search results that has been recommended by your friends or other people that found a search result relevant or enjoyed the user experience of that site.

However, to be able to use this apply new feature, you must have a Google account. You can still view the +1 without logging on but you won’t be able to see the finer detail of those people recommending that site

A more in-depth analysis has been given by Danny Sullivan of the “+1” button.

Here is Google’s quick view of the “+1” – Google +1 Video

How does this affect Paid Search?

You can use the “+1” button on search results which will appear next to the ad. Google have done testing on the ads with “+1s” and find that there is a lift for ads with the “+1” and that the response rate will increase, leading to an increase of CTR.

A higher CTR then increases your chance for higher quality score which in turn leads to achieving a lower CPC – based on Google’s quality score theory.

Google have also stated that all ads will have this function with the option to opt out, when people click on the “+1s” it won’t be considered a click and advertisers will be able to see which ads are getting the most “+1” hits.

You will eventually be able to endorse an ad with the plus “+1” button on the Google Search results, you can also do this once you visit a site, which will then automatically place the “+1” on the ad.

How does this affect Organic Search?

At this stage the “+1” does not appear to disrupt traditional SEO, but it seems, if successful, that it may change. In my opinion, ranking in the Organic Search results is more about putting keywords in meta tags and on-page and link building, so this may end up being another step in the optimisation process of websites so they meet user expectations and get all the important “+1” click.

Google’s intention to roll out “+1” is apparently not just about building a social network or adding another social layer to SEO, but it’s also about building a social graph which can then be used as a measure of page ranking. Danny Sullivan has suggested that social graphs are the way of the future

Social influences on SEO have already been around for a short time and are already popping up in blended searches on Google. There is evidence that social shares have a strong correlation with search rankings.

This graph from a SEO blog from Tom Critchlow shows correlation between metrics and ranking. It should be noted though that correlation and causation are very different phenomena, which may be entirely exclusive from each other.

“It shows that Facebook shares are well correlated with rankings. In fact, comparing to other factors we see Facebook shares are similarly correlated to the number of linking root domains.”

Find out more here – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-1-and-the-rise-of-social-seo

Your SEO or SEM/ PPC analysts will now be focusing on creating imaginative body copy and images and also ad texts which may be the difference between a ”+1” or none at all.

2010 has been a busy year for search engines, and it is becoming more and more important for them to provide the most relevant results, as the search volumes has been regularly increasing year on year.

Each year, there have been an increasing number of searches, more searchers, and those searchers do more searches themselves, so one thing is for sure: ranking well for key search terms is more important than ever.

Let’s have a look at the top changes search engines brought in 2010, in order for them to provide more relevant results and drive searchers to their site:

#1 Google drinks too much coffee and brings out the “caffeine” update

What does that mean for results? Where Google used to index pages and sites in regular waves, this update allowed them to update their results incrementally, meaning quicker indexing. If you are working to get your site optimised,

you will see changes quicker, whether they are positive or negative.

This caused quite a stir in the SEO business as rankings changed, pages disappeared and came back, but it quickly stabilised. People following the big Google algorithm updates will know it usually does impact the results quite a bit but it is always an intense moment!

#2 What you say online becomes a ranking factor

Social media is growing at a fast pace, Twitter is going to hit the 200 million user mark early this year, Facebook has already over 500 million users and its founder already has a biography movie after only 20 years of his life. Impossible for search engines to miss out on the opportunity to surf the social media wave and use the huge amount of content being shared to display more accurate results, so they started in 2010!

Google started by crawling Twitter feeds and links, and provided a “Real time” search option which enables us to search for tweets on specific keywords. There was also a debate trying to determine whether links from Twitter provide some benefits to the pages they link to, and some recent findings would lead to believe that engaging in the Tweetosphere has to be on the 2011 agenda. Google also detects when people share links with friends on Facebook.

Bing on the other hand created a partnership with Facebook, in order for them to be able to use “likes” from users to affect rankings for pages using the Facebook “Like” button.

But this is only the beginning, and 2011 will reveal many more social media related algorithm updates.

#3 Slow typers discover the joys of Google Instant

Late 2010, Google added the “Instant” feature, which provides results as you type, without having to hit “enter” for the results to display.

For many, it is more of a gadget than anything else, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one having noticed high search volumes for keywords that aren’t complete… For example, if you use the Google Keyword Tool, you’ll notice some keyword suggestions are keywords that aren’t complete such as “car ins” or “seo consu”.

Where this simplifies search for the user, this also impacts websites focusing on some longer tail keywords, so I would recommend keeping an eye open to how this can affect your traffic.

#4 Local results take over

Firstly, Google (again) have made 2010 a year to tackle the challenge of local results. Most queries including a location keyword (city, suburb, postcode, country) now display local results.

After launching Google Places, for every local query, they displayed a map with pins between the sponsored results and the organic results. This apparently was not good enough so they changed the display in order for the local results to look more like organic results, with a map on the top right hand side.

This means owning your business on Google places is very important, as this can provide a valuable spot on the first page of Google, if done and optimised well.

Evidence shows that Google is investing heavily in local search (Marissa Meyer, VP Search, moved to Local, trying to buy Yelp) and wants to use maps in a more efficient manner. 2011 will see some interesting evolutions on that side, that’s for sure.

Secondly, where mobile search tends to blend in with mainstream search, it is still a great platform to provide bespoke local results for mobile. Google Places has been implemented on Android and can be used as a standalone app. More generally, apps developed on mobile platforms are using GPS location to display local results for businesses such as bars, restaurants, banks and more. This is where local online presence becomes key.

#5 Love is in the air between Yahoo and Bing

2010 was the year where they decided to merge their organic results in an attempt to compete against Google in a more efficient way. Bing had been increasing its market share but was mainly taking them from Yahoo so, when the merger took place, Google remained the big winner.

In Australia, Google still has 95% market share while Bing/Yahoo have 4.5%. The remainder is shared among small search engines such as Altavista and Ask. (source: statcounter.com, as of Oct 2010)

As an onside, this merger has affected Yahoo’s Site Explorer quite a bit and as a result it seems like link popularity and saturation have been fairly inconsistent these past few months. So hopefully early 2011 will see this great toll get back on track!

#6 How quick does your website load?

If you feel like your website takes a while to load when on a broadband connection, then it probably is getting penalised in rankings, compared to other quicker to load competing websites.

Google decided 2010 was the year to start applying the rationale “I want my users to find relevant sites which don’t take too long to load too avoid user frustration”. Based on opinions from SEOs all around the world, this has quickly become a key factor to website optimisation.

Using Yslow for example, you will be able to assess your website and get to learn about “minifying”, “css sprites”, “gzipping”, “http requests” and other ways of reducing the page loading time and have a website Google will want to put on top.

I actually think this is positive from a user’s perspective, it makes web browsing so much more comfortable, and it pushes web developers to clean up their code; thus improving the standards of the web.

#7 New guys on the block

2010 has seen the appearance or the discovery of some interesting new competitors to the big G (Google). Instead of replicating, these new search engines are actually innovating how to search for websites.

The first and probably most interesting one for SEO is Blekko, launched in 2010 with an interesting concept using slashtags which Rich Skrenta explains here:

“Slashtags let all of the vertical engines that people define on Blekko live within the same search box. They also let you do a search and quickly pivot from one vertical to another.”

So if you want to shop for the item you are searching, you would type “red dress /shop”.

The most interesting one which relates to social media: the Likes slashtag. Do you want to display results that your Facebook friends liked? Simply type “kitten videos /likes” !

Other search engines generating interest are Yandex in English (biggest SE in Russia) and DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo has actually been around for a few years now, but it’s only recently that it has been getting a bit more attention.

#8 Other Google related updates worth reminding

Ever tried converting measures or currencies using Google? Or getting simple questions answered directly without having to click into a website? That’s one of the 2010 added features from Google.

Search for “20 Australian dollars in us dollars” and you’ll get the converted currency below the search box. Search for “how high is the Eiffel tower” and again, you’ll get the answer below the search box (1,063 feet for those who are curious).

Another interesting SEO related discovery is the increased likelihood of getting your website crawled thoroughly if your brand comes up in the online reputable press (such as “The Australian”). It has been discovered that the Google bot will read about the brand in an article and would then go to the brands website and crawl it extensively. So get your PR teams working and you could just see your brand gain reputation online.

#9 Youtube Videos

Youtube is the second most popular social site after Facebook in Australia, and sees 35 hours’ worth of video uploaded every minute. To put this in perspective, Hunter Walk, Youtube’s Director of product management, explains: “If we were to measure that in movie terms (assuming the average Hollywood film is around 120 minutes long), 35 hours a minute is the equivalent of over 176,000 full-length Hollywood releases every week.”

2010 is yet the biggest year for Youtube in terms of popularity, meaning having an online presence using video has never been as important.

With its improved video optimisation options such as video transcripts, 2011 will be the year to jump on the band wagon, if you haven’t already, and get some videos uploaded and fully optimised in order to make sure you are found.

Last week, Facebook announced the launch of its latest location product called Places. Similar to other location based social networking platforms such as Foursquare, Facebook Places allows people to “check-in” to an existing location or to add new locations to the platform through their smart phones.

When someone checks in at a place, for example a café or cinema, this shows up in that user’s news feed for their friends to see. Another feature is that it allows subsequent people who later visit the same location to see what their friends thought about the place or what they were doing at the time. Facebook Places goes a step further in social integration by helping to spot friends close by to your location. This gives people the opportunity to engage in spontaneous face to face meetings, and may have wider implications for local business marketing and privacy concerns.

The following video explains what Facebook Places is and what it can be used for:

How to access Facebook Places

Facebook Places is currently available in the United States on the Facebook App for iPhone.

You can also update Places through touch.facebook.com for all other smart phones that support W3 geo-location. There has yet to be news as to when it will become available in Australia.

However it has been announced that Foursquare, Yelp, Gowala and Booyah will be integrated with the Facebook Places API, which can pull information and pictures of the location where a user checks in.

Facebook Places and User Privacy

There has been mention about potential privacy issues associated with Facebook Places.  Once a user checks in to a location, the update shows up on that person’s wall and news feed by default. The bigger concern is that it also shows up in the activity stream of the checked in place.

Places give users the ability to tag friends who are with them when checking in to a location, another point of concern for privacy. However, privacy settings for Places can be customised to preference, as with other Facebook features. Allfacebook.com has come up with a four step guide on how to edit your privacy settings for Places.

Using Places for Local Businesses

The launch of Places presents another opportunity for local cafes, restaurants and brick and mortar shops to connect with customers and reward them for checking in to that location. If used and promoted well, Places can be a great marketing tool to help customer retention and repeat visits.

Local businesses can claim their location in Places through a verification process to ensure authenticity. This is done by claiming an existing Place or by creating one to allow others to check-in. Places within Facebook can be merged with a businesses’ Facebook Page to centralise the management of both entities. The advantage is also that the merged Page will be updated to include Place information such as maps and check-ins, as seen below:

Download the Facebook Places Guide for Businesses to find out more.

What do you think about Facebook Places? What other applications can you see Facebook Places used for?

Over the last few days it was announced that Google will be making changes to its algorithm; a sizable modification which we may have not seen since the likes of Big Daddy and Jagger’s 1-3 in 2006.

Google has stated:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

Some parts of this system aren’t completely finished yet, so we’d welcome feedback on any issues you see.”

Whilst Matt Cutts claims that most of the change will be on infrastructure, we may see some changes in the search results.

It is certainly an unexpected move from Google, which generally does not give the general public this type of insight, let alone coining a term for it before anyone else does. If you want to see a preview of this work in progress you can here: http://www2.sandbox.google.com

As for searches you will see a reordering of results, however, the change is purported to make searching faster and more accurate – more real-time. As usual Google is not revealing what exactly has been altered. Google have opted to make this change in beta for users to test, calling it a developer’s preview.

Users, as you would imagine, have already begun testing. Mashable has done this and published their results:

- Results did return faster and in some cases doubling the speed at which results are returned
- It does seem that some elements of blended search are further down in the page which could mean that not all elements have been implemented in Caffeine. Mashable even speculate that user activity on some sites may have pushed them higher in the results
- The new results do seem more relevant in some cases and it appears that it could be tightly tied with keywords
- Index size is also increased

In my testing I found that indeed the changes to the pages are not hugely significant. Doing a vanity search the first thing I noticed was that social media sites were more prominent. This may tie in with the result above that user activity may play a role in rankings.

So, what does this mean for SEO?

At the moment it simply means that we must be ready when this change rolls out. Will results have a heavier focus on keywords and user activity? If all elements of blended search are included in Caffeine then it would appear that universal results are being pushed down.

Obviously, as Google has put this out for testing, the end results will likely be very different than the current speculation of changes we are seeing at present.

As Tom Krazit stated on CNET:

“That’s not necessarily indicative of how the results would be presented, once Caffeine goes live, but it is evidence that the update will require those dependent on Google to drive traffic to their sites to study the changes. For now, Google is not sharing many details regarding how it reworked its back-end architecture and indexing process with Caffeine.”

It is still early days – so watch this space.

Further references can be found here:
Google’s New Search Index
Google Caffeine Tests

For those of you too busy to read the news in the past 24 hours, there’s been a pretty major development in the land of the search engines. Microsoft and Yahoo! have announced a deal whereby they will be combining their search offerings with the aim of invigorating the challenge to Google.

In essence, the deal means Microsoft will power Yahoo’s search. Searching through Yahoo! will still have Yahoo! branding, and be consistent with their look and feel, but will have ‘Powered by Bing’ at the bottom of the search engine results. It is said that Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and pay-per-click platform for Yahoo! sites.

Interview with Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz:

While it may sound like Microsoft are getting the better of this deal, Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers, and will also continue to use its own technology for display advertising. However, the deal doesn’t cover other web products, such as e-mail and IM, so the companies will continue to compete on some fronts.

Considering that Yahoo! rejected a bid of almost $50 billion not so long ago, it may be surprising to hear that this deal will not include any money upfront. Instead, Microsoft are to compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic coming from Yahoo’s owned and operated sites – 88% of generated revenue will go to Yahoo!.

The 10 year agreement will take around two years to come into effect, but will bear fruit to a more formidable search offering, with 30% predicted market share in the US. Many of those at Yahoo! will be offered new jobs at Microsoft while others will be offered redundancy packages.

In Australia, where Google holds a greater market share of approximately 90% (compared to around 65% in the US), this new union will have a harder time of breaking dominance. However, Bing has been holding its own since launch and reports have been pretty positive from the early adopters. Joe Pollard, ninemsn CEO, told B&T: “Since the global launch of Bing just two months ago, ninemsn has put in place ambitious plans to grow Bing in the Australian search market. We believe that successfully competing in search requires a combination of innovation, scale and an unmoving focus on satisfying the needs of the online consumer. Together with these elements, the new Microsoft and Yahoo! deal will have a positive effect on Bing’s trajectory. Although we are still very much in the early stages of collaboration, the deal will provide more consumers and advertisers with an innovative and engaging search alternative which is a great thing for the Australian market.”

It will be very interesting to see the real impact of this merger, and also hear how the intricacies of the deal will pan out as the next few months go by.

With Wolfram Alpha set to launch in the next week, there’s been a lot of hype around the potential impact it may have on the web. Wolfram Alpha is the latest in an array of new search engines, which has been developed by the mathematician Stephen Wolfram. It differs from other search engines in that it’s being billed as a “computational knowledge engine” which presents information it has collected from various sources to the browser, rather than just returning a list of potentially relevant sites.

In essence, it’s an engine that deals with facts and figures, with the information being drawn from its comprehensive and presumably ever expanding database. I’m sure I’m not the only one who, on first hearing of Wolfram Alpha, thought to myself of the need to come up with a better name. And that very issue has been under debate in Wolfram Alpha HQ, with Wolfram himself saying “Whether this ends up being Wolfram Alpha or overtaking our Wolfram.com site, that’s a subject of great internal debate at our company. We were keen to make sure this product is associated with our brand. Worst case, if we never figure out a business model at all, it’s great example of what the technology we have built can do. Our corporate name is as good a nonsense word as any Web 2.0 word.”

So despite any questions that may be raised about the branding aspect of Wolfram Alpha, there are no such reservations about the underlying technology or computational power it will hold. Using a Dell powered supercomputer, it will have the ability to process 39.6 trillion mathematical operations per second, and should have capacity to handle 175 million queries per day. “Inside Wolfram Alpha are 5 million to 6 million lines of Mathematica code that implement all those methods and models,” Wolfram said.

Wolfram Alpha doesn’t index pages or scrape the web in the manner of other search engines, it relies on data providers and its staff of 150 to add to its data set. This makes it quite a manual process to maintain up-to-date information and expand data sources, and also involves ongoing costs that will need to be funded. Wolfram Alpha, by nature, isn’t fit for ecommerce sites so you may be wondering how they’ll recoup their investment and keep their finances ticking over? The first and most obvious means is through sponsorships that they’ll have listed on the right hand side of their results pages. Whether or not this is targeted to the input query remains to be seen, but it’s difficult to envisage given the nature of the predicted search queries. It has also been suggested that a corporate version may be released for the more computation heavy users. It looks like the more likely path to success for Wolfram Alpha is for them to be bought out, and incorporated into, one of the major search engines, which Wolfram has said they’d consider should the initial reaction be a success.