I don’t know about you, but I find it very entertaining to watch how the Internet continues to evolve. It truly boggles the mind when you realize just how fast technology is advancing. This new Google update is a welcome change since I feel it can only increase the quality of the search results. Not everybody agrees of course.
“Google Search has always been about finding the best results for you. Sometimes that means results from the public web, but sometimes it means your personal content or things shared with you by people you care about. These wonderful people and this rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience. Search is still limited to a universe of webpages created publicly, mostly by people you’ve never met. Today, we’re changing that by bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search.
Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more. But clearly, that isn’t enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box.
We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships. We began this transformation with Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step in this direction by introducing three new features:
Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.
Together, these features combine to create Search plus Your World. Search is simply better with your world in it, and we’re just getting started.[Read more]
What are your personal feelings regarding this new update to Google’s algorithm update? Please leave a comment.
I’ve been doing some research on Facebook marketing lately to see if it’s worth my time to run a PPC campaign or not, and I stumbled across this simple trick to lowering the price you pay per click on Facebook!
Just as I’ve predicted for a few years now, the search engines are going social. For those of us who have a Google+ account you’ve probably noticed the little “+1″ button next to each listing in the search results. Which naturally makes us wonder how much this will effect the rank for listings that get a lot of “+1″ ticks.
It’s time for everybody to stop writing content that appeals to the search engines first, and start writing for people! Check out my FREE video showing you how I got 2,800+ visitors in 1 day by writing content that appeals to people first!
“The SEO Effect Google +1 Experiment whitepaper, concludes that the Google +1 button saw a 20% increase in rankings which led to a corresponding lift in Clickthrough rate (CTR). Whilst in my opinion, right now, the test on rankings is too fuzzy in it’s implementation and was not competitive enough a target phrase to say anything truly groundbreaking about the impact on rankings, the real merits of the study are in the impact of trust factors on CTR. The SEO Effects findings broadly match up with Verisign’s findings that their “secured by Verisign seal” caused a lift of 18% on CTR. It seems likely that this is the message Google will most likely push about +1 swell. Google have never liked talking about how to improve rankings per se, so will instead push the concept that +1 will improve clickthrough rates in organic listings, which is merit enough for webmasters to adopt it.
With that in mind, it seems fairly safe to hypothesize that integrations with Google Webmaster Tools will show how +1 increased CTR on URLs in organic searches, whilst AdWords will show CTR increases where ads are displayed to users with a +1. This latter integration will naturally provide incentive to advertisers and webmasters as higher CTR means lower cost-per-click (CPC).
Therefore, I guess a Google Analytics integration will work on accounts that have integrated Google AdWords data, but may also show a new event similar to webmaster tools. It would be cool to see if +1 data in Google Analytics can be mapped against visitor loyalty and recency statistics. It would also be nice to see if incoming search traffic can be mapped to users who only saw it as a +1 listing.
“Regardless of what we might see in terms of tools integrations, the key takeaway from the SEO effect analysis, for me, is that it really is logical to expect a rankings increase from +1′d results.
“Even though Google has never officially said that it tracks CTR in organic search listings, experienced SEOs know that does seem to be a correlation. Equally in a fairly roundabout way Google has recently acknowledged that user data is playing more of a role in organizing results, something many have suspected is going on for years.
“Either way, if a +1 increases clicks, it naturally follows that sites will see a boost in search position (even if they don’t show up as +1′d to non-logged in users) aswell as the automatic boost from appearing in social circle results.
The battle for social media supremacy is about to get interesting with Google+ entering the arena. Facebook really doesn’t have much to worry about , but Twitter could be replaced by Google+. Ryan Single gives a first look at Google+ here and Peter Yared from VentureBeat explains how Google+ could make Twitter the next Myspace:
“There are numerous comparisons between Google’s new Google+ social offering and Facebook, but most of them miss the mark. Google knows the social train has left the station and there is a very slim chance of catching up with Facebook’s 750 million active users. However, Twitter’s position as a broadcast platform for 21 million active publishers is a much more achievable goal for Google to reach…
… So, how can Google go after the 21 million people who are actively publishing on Twitter, and, more importantly, the few thousands that own the majority of Twitter followers? These types of posters are generally publishers, and Google’s core competence is serving publishers. Publishers pay a lot of attention to Google, from search engine optimization to increase the ranking on Google searches, search engine marketing keyword ads to drive traffic, and on-site advertising solutions ranging from AdSense to DoubleClick.
Publishers are interested in increasing their search rankings and improving their reach. Posting content to Google+1 increases search rankings. The black toolbar across the top of all Google services (other than YouTube), which integrates both Google+ and Google+ notifications, definitely provides reach and is now in front of as many user minutes as Facebook commands. Users commenting or liking on items from publishers will show up in their friends’ toolbars. Even if they only have a few friends, the overall traffic bump will be significant. The Google+ bar has not yet been activated on YouTube, a key publisher and celebrity channel, and likely will broadcast YouTube likes, comments and shares.
While Facebook is not sweating about Google+, the threat to Twitter is significant. Google has the opportunity to displace Twitter if it gets publishers and celebrities to encourage Google+ follows on their websites as well as pushing posts to the legions of Google users while they are in Search, Gmail and YouTube. Google was turned down when it tried to buy Twitter for $10 billion, and now it is going to try to replicate it. With Google+, the company actually has a shot.”
I love these types of success stories. While $438 may seem like a small amount of money to some of you, there are a lot of people out there that could really use an extra couple hundred dollars a month.
“1. First you’ll need an Amazon Associates account for this method to work.
2. Next you’ll need to create an article but not just any affiliate promotional article – it has to be an article that appeals to a wide range of readers. I’ll tell you exactly what topic I used – “Top 20 Weirdest Items on Amazon”; the reason I chose this topic is because it has the potential to go viral which it did. I wrote it myself but if you are not very good at writing you should outsource it. I used only plain text links like this:
20. {Funny commentary about product}{Affiliate link – plain text}
19. {Funny commentary about product}{Affiliate link – plain text}
etc.
If you guys want to see my actual blog let me know and I’ll post a link to it for you to see exactly how it looks.
Do not use image links or people won’t be as tempted to click and see the actual product.
3. I set up a free blogger blog for this but you can easily use your own hosting if you have it. At the time I just wanted to create something quickly so I went with blogger.
4. Publish your article and set up your social buttons like Share on Facebook, Digg, Twitter, etc.
5. Now you need traffic; what I did was I went to Mturk and posted a hit – Digg my post for 1 cent, that makes 100 Diggs for $1. For those of you who don’t know what Mturk is it’s a place where you can post small tasks – hits, for people to complete for just cents. Now, posting tasks like these isn’t really allowed on Mturk but I’ve seen many people do it and I’ve done it many times myself but last time I received an email from them to remove my hit so it would be a good idea to find an alternative for Mturk. I did some research and found that there are a few people on Fiverr that will get you 100 Diggs. The goal is to have your story on the first page of Digg.
My story quickly became viral, people were sharing it on Facebook and forums so I got $438 in my Associates account for that month from just that one article. Not bad for an hour of work.
Now, don’t just go and everybody write the same article about the weirdest items on Amazon, come up with something original and something that a lot of people will find interesting. Hope this will help some of you make some cash.”
