Now this is VERY interesting…Organic results are going to be further pushed down the page, making scrolling for the user necessary = UGHHH!

There is a much more in depth article on Outspoken Media here: “Google Enables Real Time Spam and More” – I highly recommend reading!

Now, I’m not saying anything definitive – but Yahoo! started to serve favicons next to their premium listing titles recently in an attempt to boost CTR – personally, I think Google has taken notice and is doing some testing of their own.

IMHO: This will send a ton of traffic to YouTube and is probably just a start of the ways they will increase RPS across their sister properties/apps.

A picture of the Page Rank Algorithm is Below:

Clearly, you want your site to be at the top of the Google page rank list, but how is this possible? Through a variety of techniques including keyword placement, internet marketing, and progress tracking, your site will begin to show up at the top of any search. How important is it that your site receives top marks? Well, studies show that consumers are far more likely to click on a site that pops up first during any given search. Why? Some believe that the first hits are the ones that can be trusted, and others simply don’t want to bother looking for those sites that are listed last.

In order to create a website that gains a lot of recognition, you’ll have to employ the services of an internet optimization company that knows what it’s doing. Some companies might claim to get your site at the top of the Google page rank system, but many of these companies cannot deliver on this promise. A great internet marketing company should have various tools that can help your site get to the top, and remain on top for a long time. Only these companies should be trusted with your business.

As soon as you can afford to, make sure to work on that Google page rank. Otherwise, your site may never be seen by anyone. If you think of your site in terms of a mortar and brick shop, this concept will make a lot more sense: who will wander by your shop if there’s no street in front of it? See how important that ranking is? Find an internet optimization company or toolset with proven results, a great track record, and ideas that make sense for your company. As soon as you start driving traffic to your site, you’ll find that your sales will begin to shoot through the roof.

Sign up for SEOintelligence and increase your Google Page Rank Today.

Scenario number one: Google ranking – who needs it? Let’s assume that you don’t know that much about the ranking system. So, you decide to forgo most internet marketing techniques, and you make the executive decision that you’ll only worry about keywords. You write tons of articles using these keywords, and you distribute them all over the internet. Then, you set up a basic website, have lots of your product made, and wait for the clients to come knocking at your door. You wait. And wait. And wait (you get the idea). Why aren’t clients showing up? You used the keywords, you set-up shop, but you just aren’t getting any new customers.

Scenario number two: Google ranking – more than simple keywords. Let’s assume that you know you don’t understand how internet marketing works. So, rather than tinker with it yourself, you decide to hire an internet marketing company such as SEO Intelligence. This company uses a variety of internet marketing tactics including search engine placement, keywords, real time tracking, great landing pages, and many other methods. This company also keeps using these very same methods on a regular basis, so that your business never falls off of the ranking charts. Within months, you find that you have more business than you can handle.

Clearly, scenario number two is the optimal one. Why? While Google ranking is important, it must also be handled by professionals who know what they are doing. It simply isn’t enough to use a few keywords here and there in order to gain business. You have to keep your company going by having a consistent marketing team behind it at all times. Keywords do help, but they aren’t going to place your business above the rest. If you have just set up shop online, and you want to succeed, do yourself a favor and seek out an internet marketing company that knows how to keep your business flowing.

Take a Free SEOiQ Scan and diagnose your SEO problems instantly, and improve your Google ranking today!

*Yahoo! or MSN also should highly consider buying these companies as well!

That’s the official line, at least, but what it really wants to do is organise all the world’s information and stick ads on it.

It’s the king of web search and search advertising, but what about the other things we do online?

If Google went shopping, these are the six sites and services they should choose to help make it even more powerful.
1. StumbleUpon

Back in 2007, eBay bought StumbleUpon for around $75million. By the end of 2008 it was rumoured to be looking for a buyer, possibly because hits are down considerably, but more likely because it didn’t have a clue what to do with it. It’s still an important site, though: at the time of writing it has 7.2 million members telling one another about interesting stuff they’ve found online.

In many respects it’s the anti-Google: where Google helps you find what you’re looking for, StumbleUpon finds things that you didn’t know you were looking for. It also offers a different kind of advertising. StumbleUpon knows not just what you’re looking at, but what interests, amuses or delights you – and that means it can offer advertisers something a bit more interesting than plain old AdWords. Lots of user data, targeted advertising: we’re amazed Google hasn’t snapped it up already.

2. Twitter

Google’s search spiders are amazing things, but they can’t do what Twitter Search does: let you see in real time what six million people are saying. Bringing Twitter into the fold could work in two ways: as a search tool in its own right, and as a way to refine web results based on ‘trending’ – that is, up and coming – topics people are chatting about. For Twitter users, Google could offer better reliability: while Google Mail has been up and down a bit over the last few months, you’re still much more likely to see the Twitter Fail Whale than have problems with a Google site.

Twitter might be open to an approach: negotiations with Facebook for a $500m sale fell apart not because Twitter didn’t like the amount being offered, but because the deal included Facebook stock that the social network was apparently valuing far too highly. According to Business Week, the offer was $100m in cash and the rest in shares, but Twitter wanted the Facebook shares to be based on their real market value, not Facebook’s own valuation. Facebook didn’t like that idea and the deal collapsed.

3. Valve

Everyone thought Google was buying Valve Software in September, but it didn’t happen. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t, though. As we argued at the time, “There’s still room for an iTunes of gaming, one giant that defines an entire up-and-coming industry, and everyone’s going to want to be it. Valve and its Steam service have both the content and credibility to become it, and Google is one of very few companies that could theoretically scoop up this notoriously independent firm.”

The rationale still stands: Google would make money from every game sold, could rent servers to clans, could sell anonymised usage data to publishers and it could sell in-game ads, too.

Check out the full article on TechRadar.com
6 companies Google should buy right now | News | TechRadar UK

The best way to get affordable search engine optimization is by doing it yourself with SEOintelligence, there are a few easy tips to follow. One of the easiest ways to do this is by organizing your Web site folders/structure properly. Of course you want your site to be sophisticated, but that doesn’t mean it should be confusing. Most often, sophistication means simplicity. Take out any unnecessary graphs or charts your site might have because this can confuse the search engines. Another way to do cheap SEO yourself is by updating your domain name. If it is your company name and your company isn’t well known, then select another one that is related to the products you provide.

This connects to the keywords used in your page titles. If there aren’t any in there, then you need some. Don’t overdo it, but make sure there are keywords in each title. This will help better navigate the search engines to your site. Another way to get affordable search engine optimization is with linking. If you are doing it yourself, the best way to do so is simply asking. Put a link of a relevant company’s site on your page and ask them if they will reciprocate the favor. Most often they will.

Doing it yourself is a great way to get affordable search engine optimization. It can be time consuming, but the results are well worth it. If it starts to get too difficult or confusing, just try to keep it simple. You don’t have to do every search engine optimization technique out there because that would take a lifetime. Doing a few of them will get your site noticed more. Just remember that it is the key to getting recognized online, so something is always better than nothing.

And, of course there probably is another more competitive reason (IMHO): Google secretly wants to clone/buy Twitter (think of the impression opportunity for ads!!!!)

Would it surprise you if over 40 percent of the queries entered into search boxes at search engines consist of proper nouns, such as the names of specific people or places or things?

Or that combination’s of proper nouns and nouns might make up over 70 percent of most searches?

At least those are a couple of the conclusions from researchers at Yahoo who are trying to find effective ways to better understand the structure of search queries used by searchers.

A study of queries entered into Yahoo’s search engine in August of 2006 took a close look at The Linguistic Structure of English Web-Search Queries (pdf), and tried to get an understanding of the way that people phrase what they are looking for when they search.

The researchers behind the study came up with some interesting information about the queries that people use, and the structure of those queries.

For example, when people perform a second search related to a previous search, one of the most common things that they change in their search terms are numbers. Someone looking for information about the first Spiderman movie might type into a search box the phrase “spiderman 1.” Following up, they may then type in “Spiderman 2.”

The rest of the article dives into the use and structure of peoples query habits and tendencies, it truly will help get you in the mind of the searcher and user easier. As a SEM/SEO expert I sometimes don’t realize – I don’t search like regular people, I use it as a TOOL…most people don’t.
…..Click here to Read more Study on the Structure of Search Queries – SEO by the Sea

Thanks again to Bill @ SEObytheSea.com for such a great post…his site is awesome.

Google’s attempts to break into the social networking space haven’t really been too impressive, though they obviously recognize its importance. Their Open Social involvement and launch of Friend Connect show they have commitment. The problem? Their efforts haven’t proven as popular as Google Search or Gmail.

Actually, they should’ve worked more on integrating something through Gmail, which could have had a much more viral reach. People could have simply clicked to recommend it to others.

Twitter would be the perfect platform. Though if they’re feeling really generous, they should buy it and keep it free, sort of like what they did with Google Analytics. It would give them the hottest thing in social media right now and an area that could use some help with tracking success.

Left to its own devices, Twitter could create a large chink in Google’s armor. It generates traffic and is far more accurate on building TrustRank.

True, people are gaming it to some point, but fakes are found out a lot quicker than they are in search results pages. While the fake Dalai Lama grabbed tens of thousands of followers, he was shot down inside 36 hours.

The Immediate Social Search Option

The power of Twitter goes beyond just what it can offer as far as keeping Google at the head of all things online. It could easily integrate a button at the top to be able to search the Web and take people to a Google search page. I’d use it. I’ve had to tab out of Twitter many times to find something for someone.

Plus, they would have the impact of the search function in Twitter itself. My friend Avi Wilenski told me he used Twitter when his hosting went down to see if others were having the same problem and complaining.

For immediate search of events, such as the recent plane crash in the Hudson River or comments on the inauguration, nothing beats the speed of Twitter search.

The element of branding and reputation management would also be a big plus to their large advertisers. They could add Twitter comments in to Google Alerts and have real time comments being sent to people. The options here are endless.

Danny Sullivan, in his SMX keynote this week, asked Google and Yahoo to integrate Twitter search. Maybe if Google bought it, they could tweak the search option as well as really learn something about TrustRank. The interrelationship of followers and the use of retweets may give them some deeper understanding that could be then applied to the search algorithm.

“Why [don't] Google and Yahoo offer Twitter search? Gives people instant feedback. Was that really an earthquake? Is everyone else’s power out? Develop a hyper-real-time tool to see what’s being buzzed about,” Danny was reported as saying by Lisa Barone.

We know they couldn’t do it on their own. Jaiku got pulled, and the rest are just passive efforts to have a hand in the space.

So please, Google, grab Twitter and do the right thing — the “not evil” thing — and keep it a free resource that you can add a search tab to and grab revenue from right there.

Chris Boggs Fires Back

I’ve only recently joined Twitter and am starting to understand its potential.

A partner in our company, Adam Cohen, is someone who I would refer to as a power user. He has evangelized the value of it as both a networking and knowledge-sharing tool, and has developed a pretty impressive following.

I asked him why I get so few responses to the types of tweets I post, such as asking for feedback on Ethnio, Google’s First Click Free, and other tactics or tools we (or our clients) have considered testing. He advised me that I need to be more direct and call-out specific @’s in order to get momentum for the feedback.

Adam’s advice makes me feel that you’re on the right track in your analysis of Twitter, Frank. This tool has very powerful trust and “folksonomic” implications, and it may be wise for Google to test it out.

Friend Connect is no less of a bomb than Google Co-Op seems to have been, but the possibly more useful combination of some Co-Op factors with Twitter could make things very interesting.

For those unfamiliar, Co-Op allows signed-in users to label or tag sites around a particular subject. Some users, such as Dr. Choi, have become in essence “power users,” as evident by the sites they have labeled within the pharmaceutical industry, for example. This user was already trusted by the system back in 2006 when I was first experimenting with Co-Op. His hypothetical Twitter network may certainly be well qualified to collectively influence certain rankings, so that could be an interesting test.

If Google buys Twitter, it will be interesting to see how much they would pay. Even more interesting would be to see if they kept it free, and how they would leverage the community. There certainly is a lot of space on the site layout for AdSense boxes, that’s for sure.

Please share your thoughts with Frank Watson and Chris Boggs on Twitter.

Should Google Buy Twitter? – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

I think this is their vision in 5+ years (maybe less) and all media will be distributed through the web.

People Chrome is not “just a browser” and Android is more than a “mobile OS”.

Google is smart, and I am watching their patent filings closely

Like Napoleon marching into an abandoned Moscow, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have led Google’s advance into traditional advertising only to find nothing to loot. Now begins Google’s long imperial retreat, starting with 40 layoffs.

Susan Wojcicki, the millionaire sister-in-law of Brin who also holds a management role in the company, announced the job cuts in a blog post, as she laid out plans for Google to exit the business of brokering radio ads, a business it entered in 2006 when it bought dMarc Broadcasting for $102 million.

Up to 40 Googlers will lose their jobs, a small percentage of the 20,000 remaining employees at the search giant. But the real cut here is to google’s ambitions.

dMarc was Google’s first big move outside online advertising. It followed swiftly with announcements of forays into selling ads in newspapers, magazines, and TV. The strategy had more to do with Wall Street than with Madison Avenue, though: Google desperately needed to create the illusion for shareholders that it could tap more than just the market for Internet search ads.

Google has already pulled out of print advertising. Now radio is gone. Will TV advertising be next? Wojcicki, in her blog post, insisted that Google would keep trying to break into the TV business. The rationale: Like the clicks that give Google feedback on which ads work and which ones don’t, Google can track when TV viewers change channels in the middle of a TV ad.

The feedback loop of clickstream data has made Google victorious online. The more ads it sells, the more data it has; the more data it has, the more accurate its targeting is; and the more accurate its targeting, the more money it makes for advertisers and publishers, drawing yet more ads. Microsoft and Yahoo, with a smaller base of advertisers and users, never stood a chance.

That dynamic simply doesn’t exist with radio or print advertising. And the channel-switching data Google touts simply is not informative enough to shape TV-advertising campaigns.

Napoleon’s rout in Russia, far from home, was followed in a few short years by defeat just outside the borders of France in Waterloo. His army was still mighty after Moscow. It was the long, cold march back home that devastated it. Could Larry and Sergey’s hubris lead them to a similar defeat?

Google: Google Cuts Off Its Big-Media Dreams