Saturday, December 3, 2011

Next Google Page Rank (PR) Update 2012


Google PageRank Update for year 2012 is

First Google January Page Rank 2012 Update
Expected time: 30 Jan, 2012 – 2 Feb, 2012

Second Google June Page Rank 2012 Update
Expected time: 30 Jun – 2 July, 2012

Third Google October Page Rank 2012 Update
Expected time: 30 Sep – 2 Oct, 2012

Fourth Google December Page Rank 2012 Update
Expected time: 31 Dec – 3 Jan 2012

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

70% of Companies Facebook and Twitter Pages Not Ranking in Google

recent study by BrightEdge has revealed that the social profiles of most leading brands don’t rank well in Google.

While most of the leading consumer brands are investing a lot of time and money to increase their presence on the search engines they are doing very little to increase their social media presence by correctly optimizing their Facebook and Twitter pages to make them more noticeable in search results.

The study reviewed 200 of the world’s top brands for their social media presence and found that while almost 100% of these brands hold the top or near the top ranks for their brand names on the SERP’s, 71% did not have their Facebook pages in the top 20 results of the Google SERP’s. Twitter faired a little better – 68% of the brands surveyed did not have their Twitter pages in the top 20 results of the Google SERP’s.

Based on the analysis of various social media pages BrightEdge found out that there was no necessary correlation between the number of friends and followers and SERP rankings. For example, the Facebook page of a leading photography equipment brand did not rank in the top 20 search results, despite having more than 160,000 fans. On the other hand, a leading auto manufacturer with only 17,307 fans had a Facebook page that ranked in the top 10 of search results.

Retailers are the most successful in optimizing their social media pages. Of the top 23 retailers surveyed, 13 have Twitter pages in the top 20 search results. The brands that are currently least effective at optimizing social media are those from the finance and insurance sector with only three of the top 43 companies having Facebook pages that rank in the top 20 search results.

Does it really matter if searchers don’t find your Facebook or Twitter page in a Google search? Feel free to share your thoughts below.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Bing/Yahoo gaining on Google

Bing powered search is gaining ground on Google, according to the latest data released byhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Experian Hitwise.

The Yahoo Bing duo now handles 30.1% of all U.S. searches - a month-on-month increase of 5% that comes mostly at Google's expense. Google now handles 64.42% of all U.S. searches, a month-on-month loss of 3%.

Yahoo and Bing both achieved the highest success ratings, with more than 80% of all searches conducted on the two services leading to page views. Google was only able to manage a 66% success rating.

Matt Adams, managing director of the PPC, SEO and Digital marketing specialist at Go Optimisation said: “Google would argue that ‘searches’ aren’t the most reliable indicator."

"With their new features (like Google instant) and better results (Panda update), Google would argue that their users find the results/information they're looking for with fewer searches than before. However, reaction to both major changes have been mixed."

Adams said other factors also contributed to the jump in Bing-powered search, pointing to Firefox setting Bing as its default search, the new Bing-optimised versions of Internet Explorer, and the new Facebook tie-up.

Adams said this final factor is especially important. Since the incorporation of Facebook into Bing searches, the market share of Bing/Yahoo has moved from 24% in October 2010 to 30% today.

The Facebook alliance also gave Microsoft a jump on personalised social search results, coming as Google bids to make a mark in the social search market with the +1 feature.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Google sets up sting for Bing amid accusations of copied search results

Many people in SEO are of the opinion that Google is the search engine of choice when optimising your website. It’s no surprise that other search engines aspire to be as big as it, but Google has accused search engine rival Microsoft of pilfering its own search results for Bing.

The realisation dawned on Google with its team for correcting typo errors in the SERPs. Part of their duties is to monitor the performance of their search rivals, such as Bing and Yahoo!. The team noticed that any errors that they corrected would show up on Bing’s results too. However, Bing did not say that they had corrected the mistake themselves, it just ‘happened’.

Google decided to set up a sting operation to catch out the opposition. It created code that allowed it to rank a page manually for a specific search term, and attached it to obscure searches such as “hiybbprqag” and “ndoswiftjobinproduction”. The result was that when these terms were searched for, they would produce a unique web page in Google that wouldn’t crop up in other search results.

Google then had a team search for these terms using Microsoft Internet Explorer, with its Bing toolbar, and Suggested Sites enabled. Two weeks after the operation was set up, Bing displayed the Google results that had been coded by hand.

Google Fellow Amit Singhal said:

“I’ve got no problem with a competitor developing an innovative algorithm. But copying is not innovation, in my book.”

“It’s cheating to me because we work incredibly hard and have done so for years but they just get there based on our hard work… Another analogy is that it’s like running a marathon and carrying someone else on your back, who jumps off just before the finish line.”

Microsoft’s Stefan Weitz countered:

“Opt-in programs like the [Bing] toolbar help us with clickstream, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites. This ‘Google experiment’ seems like a hack to confuse and manipulate some of these signals.”

In SEO we come across ‘scraper’ websites that scrape content from other sites all the time. They’re low quality sites consisting of nothing more than copied content from elsewhere on the web. Is Bing a scraper site now?

Google announces +1

Facebook may have once cornered the user review market, but those days are now over. On March 30th, Google announced its rival product to the Facebook ‘Like’ button, the ‘+ 1′ button, which allows users to indicate their likes in the search engine results pages.

The search engine company noted that the new feature is meant as an extension of its general social media plan, which has seen the incorporation of social media and personalised results into users’ searches. The company is now taking that one step further, allowing users to recommend pages to people they know by clicking ‘+ 1′. This means users looking for a good restaurant locally in Liverpool can access friends’ recommendations.

In taking Facebook on, the search engine might well have found the right angle. Google’s attempts to incorporate social into search have got off to a slow start. The ability to communicate, after a fashion, within the searches of people you know may be what is needed to make Google a social force.

In terms of search engine optimisation, the development is both good and bad news. The good news is that a business may be able to control these likings, at least for a short time. Google will no doubt work out any loopholes that allow site owners to take advantage. The bad news is that this system puts even more emphasis on the individual user, meaning a site owner needs to concentrate on very specific user groups when planning for website optimisation, something that makes SEO jobs just a little more complicated.

SMO requires social media research

Social media optimisation, or SMO, is something that many companies are doing with their websites as part of SEO without even knowing it. With the incredible rise in popularity of social media in the last few years, a site needs to be active to get any reaction. As your site’s users become more enmeshed with their online social communities, the best way to approach them is through their community spirit.

The methods of SMO, just like search engine optimisation, vary from site to site. You might want to simply feature a couple of affiliation buttons on your homepage. You might want to get your site into social bookmarking circles. You might install some of the numerous widgets that social media networks are now offering to participants. All of these moves are going to reap very little reward, however, if you haven’t managed to track down what your target users actually need.

Different social media sites appeal to different groups of Internet users. Digg, for instance, has a predominantly technical leaning. Twitter tends to attract users who are into mobile communication. Facebook, of course, has a broad range of users, but is so big that a little definition is needed to reach the right people.

It’s best to research your options before putting a social media plan into place. It’s not much use featuring a Digg bookmarking button on your pages if your site or your users have absolutely no technical knowledge.

If you’ve already got a few social media buttons on your pages, they probably came from the pursuit of your own interests. In most cases, these will match up quite neatly with the needs of your site users, but it is worth doing a little research. It’s just as important to have the right focus for your social media optimisation as it is for search engine optimisation.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Google Shares Android Operating Tips

Three days ago, some of you no doubt opened a present and were surprised (or not, depending on how many hints you dropped) to find an Android phone inside. Now, while we're sure you're capable of reading the manual and experimenting, here's a collection of Android tips straight from Google.

Interestingly, these pointers come from Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President of Product Management and one of only nine executive officers, rather than some Android engineer. Then one other thing we'll note: some of the tips just apply to Android 2.3 (AKA Gingerbread).

So on to the suggestions. Rosenberg recommended, "Tell your phone what to do by pressing the microphone icon next to the search box on the home screen, or long press the magnifying glass. You can tell it to send an email or text message ('send text to mom, see you for pizza at 7'), call someone ('call mom'), navigate somewhere ('navigate to pizza'), or listen to music ('listen to Mamma Mia')."

Later, Rosenberg wrote, "To copy/paste from a webpage, long press some text, drag the handles around to select the text you want to copy, and press somewhere in the highlighted region. To paste, simply long press a text entry box and select paste. Gmail is a bit different: you need to go to Menu > More > Select Text."

Furthermore, "In Gingerbread (and supported hardware), you can Shift+Key to capitalize a letter instead of going to a separate all caps keyboard."

Then a long list of app recommendations Rosenberg went through included Angry Birds, Astro, Chrome to Phone, Flash, Fruit Ninja, FXCamera, Google Maps, Instant Heart Rate, Phoneanlyzr, RemoteDroid, Shazam, SoundHound, Tango, and YouTube.

More tips are available on the Official Google Blog if you're interested. Just try not kill your phone's battery while getting familiar with the device.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Google PageRank 2011: Update Schedule for 2011 year

Google PageRank Update Schedule for the year 2011:

First 2011 PageRank (PR) Update: 31 March – 3 April 2011
Second 2011 PageRank (PR) Update: 31 June – 3 July 2011
Third 2011 PageRank (PR) Update: 31 September – 3 October 2011
Fourth 2011 PageRank (PR) Update: 31 December – 3 January 2012

All these updates are major PR updates.
The data is the assumption based on previous PR updates.