Tag Archives: Google

A look at the future of search with Google’s Amit Singhal at SXSW

Posted on March 10, 2013 by | Leave a comment
Guy Kawasaki interviewing Amit Singhal at SXSW 2013. Photo: Victoria Harres.

Guy Kawasaki interviewing Amit Singhal at SXSW 2013. Photo: Victoria Harres.

Today, Guy Kawasaki interviewed Amit Singhal, Google’s senior vice president of search.  Billed as a conversation about the future of search in mobile world, the conversation ranged into devices and other future Google projects.

To put the conversation in context, it’s worth repeating a fact Singhal dropped on the crowd in response to Kawasaki’s question “What really is on the internet?”

According to Singhal, everything is on the internet, and it’s sitting on more than 30 trillion web addresses, which in turn reside on some 250 million web domains.

The evolution of search

According to Singhal, who’s been with Google for 20 years and has a PhD in search, at the beginning, people didn’t expect search to work.  That’s changed entirely today – searches are growing increasingly granular and complex.  Additionally, people are searching all the time.  When desktop search volumes go down – at mealtimes, for example, and in the evenings – mobile search volumes increase.

How to gain search rank

Once again, the advice was simple – publish useful content that adds value.  However, Singhal made an interesting point – that search engine optimization is really about marketing your content to search engines – telling them what it’s about, and why it’s important.

When it comes to the mechanics of achieving rank, it’s important to keep something firmly in mind: A perfect search engine should know exactly what you mean, and give you exactly what you want, and that’s Google’s goal.  As Singhal said, search engines need to be comprehensive, relevant and fast.

Inbound links are one signal, but they use more than 200 other signals, including: on-page content, words in the title.

What’s in development now?

Google Now is one project Singhal mentioned, describing it as “… the things you need to know, just coming to you.

“The future of search would be bringing knowledge to the world in a completely multimodal environment,” noted Singhal.

He envisions Google Now as a perfect assistant – it’s by your side, you can talk to it and ask it things.  But it should also tell you things proactively, such as when traffic is bad and you need to leave a bit earlier than anticipated to get to your next meeting.

Other things on the collective minds at Google include the knowledge graph, speech recognition and natural language understanding, brought together, as Singhal says, to create “search magic.”

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik.

 

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Life at the Intersection of Search and Social

Posted on March 2, 2013 by | Leave a comment

When it comes to Twitter, engagement is key, says Peter Greenberger, Twitter’s director of sales in Washington, DC.

“Followers is somewhat of a vanity metric,” Greenberger said Wednesday, during a Social Media Week panel on Life at the Intersection of Search and Social in Washington. “You are who you follow and you are who you tweet.”

For brands, the vehicle for Twitter engagement is simple. Case in point: 50 percent of this year’s Superbowl ads had hashtags, he said.

Greenberger was joined by a couple heavy hitters from the search and social industries – Trevor Madigan, formerly of Facebook and founder of The Vision Lab, and Tripp Donnelly, founder and CEO of RepEquity.

The group discussed how social media is changing search and what this means for one’s social presence.

“Google has always been – at its essence – a social network,” Donnelly said. “We as humans trust what’s on Google Page 1 to the tune of 90 percent. What’s in your social profile? It’s something we need to consider.”

Greenberger agreed, admitting he recently searched for himself on two platforms – Google and Bing. He added that taking care of one’s social profile is critical when people are trying to find you or your company.

“Think like a search engine,” Donnelly said. “You dominate most of your page; people will land on a property that’s controlled by you. That’s important from a marketing side and for reputational reasons as well.”

The future of search and social looks like this: A real-time aspect, especially with regard to Twitter, geocentric and with more customization and relevancy, said Greenberger.

“We’re probably going to see the 50 pages and millions of [search] results going away,” Madigan said, adding that Facebook and your social network likely will come into play, advising and impacting your decisions. “It’ll be more simple.”

Christine Cube is a media relations manager with PR Newswire and freelance writer. You can follow her @cpcube or see what she’s up to @PRN4Bloggers.

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Google Update: “Search Plus Your World” and a Key Benefit for PR

Posted on January 11, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Google is set to roll out a radical change to the search results so many of us have come to rely upon daily.   Called “Search Plus Your World,” the change will blend content shared by your friends into the search engine results page (“SERP”) you see. If, that is, you’re logged into Google and you’re actively using Google+ and other services.

As Google put it on their blog, “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.”

According to Google, once the change is rolled out, users who are logged into Google will see the following content added to their search results:

  1. Personal Results, including Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you
  2. 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,
  3. 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.

Maybe I’ve not had enough coffee this morning and am feeling a bit grumpy, but this feels like a thinly veiled attempt to promote Google+ usage.

Forgive me, but I’m skeptical.  First and foremost, while I’m on Google+, I’m not terribly active.  I’ve invested in building my networks over on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and it’s to those established networks I gravitate. So it’s safe to say that I will be biased against services that are centered on Google+.

Secondly, and this is my real problem with increasingly personalized search results, chances are pretty good I’ve already seen the content that was shared with me on my social networks.  When I turn to Google, it’s because I’m looking for something else. You know, something that I’ve not already seen. I don’t need to see the item that was at the top of my Facebook newsfeed or prominently featured on the web site I just visited.  Actually, Google would provide tremendous value if it could focus on serving up relevant content it knows I’ve not seen!

Profiles in search – something PR people should pay attention to

My own grousing aside, there is one very important new feature that I’m taking advantage of – and you should too, if you’re interested in promoting yourself or someone else as a thought leader, or if you do any sort of influencer targeting and outreach – the display of personal profiles in search results.

Specifically, Google notes that  Profiles in Search will display “autocomplete predictions for various prominent people from Google+, such as high-quality authors from our authorship pilot program.”

The authorship program enables writers to link their content to their Google profile.   People finding content from that author will also see a link to that author’s profile, along with an invitation to follow the author, making it easy for people to find and follow them.

New "Profiles in Search" feature from Google embeds profiles (and follow buttons) in search results.

It really is pretty slick, and the visibility benefits are undeniable.

Okay. Fine. This might provide the impetus for me to start using Google+ with a bit more enthusiasm and vigor – just as the folks at Google hope.  Playing nicely with the world’s biggest search engine certainly can’t do anything but help build visibility for the content one publishes.

Author Sarah Skerik is on Google+, albeit somewhat reluctantly.  You can also follow her on Twitter @sarahskerik.  Sarah is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of free ebook Unlocking Social Media for PR.

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Social sharing and behavior changes driven by Google+

Posted on July 11, 2011 by | 2 Comments

The launch of Google+ has had an undeniable impact on social sharing. Source: SEOmoz

The flight to Google+ continues fast and furious, at least among the social media early-adopter crowd, and some interesting observations and data are starting to resolve against all of the noise and static.

+1 usage skyrockets

Use of the +1 button to share content has dramatically spiked post Google+ launch.    SEOmoz ran some numbers using the top 100 Technorati blogs as their sample, and found significant changes in use of the +1 button, which is all the more interesting given the fact that Google+ isn’t yet fully open and accessible.  The findings were interesting, to say the least:

  • The number of +1 shares of articles on the top blogs almost doubled after the launch of Google+.  The +1 shares came from both search results and users clicking the +1 button embedded on the blog sites (only a quarter of the sites implemented the +1 button.)
  • At the same time +1 shares were burgeoning, Facebook shares per article plummeted by almost half post the Google+ launch.

Now, we do need to take this with a grain of salt or two.  The Technorati top 100 blogs are headed by the HuffPo, Mashable, Techcrunch, Gizmodo, Engadget, TMZ  …  and I think it’s safe to assume the audience for these blogs is more active on social networks than your average bear, and I’d bet the audiences for the top blogs include a disproportionately large number of Google+ users.

That said, an interesting point regarding our personal social networks was raised on the Content Marketing News site, suggesting that Google+, with its Circles feature, invites users to be more deliberate and selective with respect to managing their personal networks — which ultimately informs all sorts of behavior, including the sharing and consumption of information.

An invitation to closely manage our our personal networks

One persistent problem people seem to have with Facebook is the blending of people different aspects of your life (work, high school, church, playgroups, college) in one newsfeed and one network.  Facebook lists and groups do help but they can be fiddly to use .  Google+ has taken aim at this problem by creating Circles, which makes it easy to organize and categorize your friends, families, colleagues and classmates, enabling you to communicate with specific groups.

“I have no intention of making the mistakes most of us seem to have made on Facebook,” said Gary Kim, in recent Content Marketing Institute post, “We all seem to have lots of “friends” we don’t know, and brands we really don’t want to follow that somehow wound up on our lists.”

Is this new selectivity driving more sharing?  I can’t answer personally, because while I have a healthy number of professional peers comfortably arranged in a circle on Google+,  none of my personal friends are yet using the network.  However,  I’ve already been happily sharing away and discoursing on Google+ and the fact that it’s easy to pick and choose audiences for content bodes well for Google+ (in my own opinion.)

These early findings from SEOmoz are noteworthy, but I think most people would agree that this limited sample isn’t enough to take to the bank.   Much remains to be seen with respect to the public roll out of Google+, the degree to which the wider public adopts the new network and whether or not we continue to see changes in social behaviors.

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media.

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Chaos at Google Shouldn’t Up-end Social PR and Content Strategies

Posted on July 5, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Source: Mashable

As many Americans were tending the grill, lolling in the shade and watching fireworks yesterday, the corner of the blogosphere devoted to search engines was on fire.   Google’s agreement with Twitter to display Tweets in near real-time in search results expired over the holiday weekend.

Tweets haven’t disappeared from search results entirely.  The public areas of Twitter are still accessible to Google’s spiders, and tweets are still showing up in search results.  However, Google is no longer taking a dedicated feed of tweet data from Twitter which included information about your social graph, enabling Google to display tweets from your social circle within your search results.

Google has effectively shut down real-time search, however, the company promises that it will return, but gives no set time frame.   In the meantime, tiny search engine Topsy is the only place one can search for tweets long-past.  However, other search engines, including Bing, will continue to intake feeds from Twitter, and incorporate social data and tweets in their search results.

Search engines are capricious, and it’s easy to forget the underlying fact that they are businesses and their motives do not include positioning your brand advantageously.   Rapid shifts in search algorithms can play havoc for those who attempt to game search results.

So what does all this mean for your PR and content strategies?  Nothing, I would argue.  Between the flurry of changes to their algorithm and the limited launch of Google+, Google has put its money on social content and personalized results.  Other search engines have done the same.  And, search engine benefits aside, social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn play important roles in the consumption (and sharing, and dissemination) of news and information.  Abandoning social networks because of the chaos at Google is a bad idea.

Many PR pros now consider search engine visibility for their messages and brands an important key performance indicator (KPI) and something they measure closely. Tactics that are still useful for building online visibility include:

  • Target your tweets. Find the different stories within your press releases, for example, and tweet them separately.  Don’t just tweet “XYZ Co. Announces Something Important….”  Look within the press release for facts, stats and bullet points that can stand alone as tweets, with links back to message. Don’t forget to identify and then use relevant hashtags.  (Tips on writing a tweetable press release)
  • Atomize the content.  Are you publicizing a white paper, or a new product?  Derive as much content as you can from your central asset.  Build a slide deck that offers key points and post it to SlideShare.  Create an infographic, and share that on Twitter and Facebook. Video a short chat with one of the key players and upload that to sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo, and embed it in your blog.  Atomizing the content puts interesting pieces of information in various networks, where people can find- and share – your message.  Many of these networks are search engine friendly and can provide one more way for your content to be indexed by the engines and displayed in their results.  (More on atomizing content)
  • Take the time to optimize the press release.  Using the correct keywords and structuring the press release (or any other content you plan to deploy digitally for that matter) with search engines in mind will more clearly inform engines about your message and can help improve how it is indexed, and ultimately displayed. (Learn more about optimizing press releases and other content)

Simply put, brands that take the time, energy and effort to build authentic presences in social networks to which their audiences gravitate will be rewarded. Loyalty, mindshare, and visibility via the viral nature of social sharing are key benefits organizations can derive from building a truly connected brand.

Related reading:

PaidContent: See You Later, Realtime: Google Ends Twitter Search Deal, For Now

Mashable: Google Loses Access to Twitter Stream, Suspends Realtime Search

SearchEngineLand: As Deal With Twitter Expires, Google Realtime Search Goes Offline

Author Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media.

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The best things I read this week

Posted on July 1, 2011 by | Leave a comment

This week’s favorite reads are a mixed bag of PR philosophy, social tactics and search updates.

Why isn’t making money a PR objective?

Craig Pearce (@commaim) is never one to hold back, and he tackles many tough questions on his blog.  This post of his was actually published earlier in June, but I read it this week, and it made the cut for this post.   Craig delves into the KPIs we use to measure public relations and specifically challenges us to think about why generating profit is (generally speaking) not on PR’s radar screen.

The Fallacy of Round the Clock Social Media

Like New York City, social networks never sleep.  Many argue that your brand presence on social channels shouldn’t sleep, either.  In this post, author Chris Hall begs to differ, discussing when timeliness of responses matters, and when it is less important, noting, “…the only way to seem human is to be like one.”

Hangout is the Breakout Feature of Google+

Google+ debuted this week, in a closed beta that left many unable to sign up for the long-awaited social network from the search giant.   SearchEngineLand concluded that the breakout feature of Google+ is “Hangout,” the video chat feature that enables up to 10 people connect live.   Bradley Horotwitz, Google’s VP of product development for apps, was on the Hangout session, and suggested that we need to be thinking of Hangout as a platform, inviting multiple use cases far beyond small meet-ups and potentially third party developer involvement.

Is Google+ Going to Kill Facebook?

Forrester analyst Nate Elliott doesn’t think so, but does note that Google+ could make things more difficult for marketers, as the “Circles” feature enables users to be very selective, and to narrowly define their groups of friends.  Will they include brands?  Doesn’t seem terribly likely ….

Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media.

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How the Company You Keep Determines the Search Results You See

Posted on June 23, 2011 by | 9 Comments

A blog post titled “Social Annotations in Search: Now your Social Network = Rankings” on SEOMoz yesterday stopped me in my tracks.  The post, authored by SEOMoz chief Rand Fishkin, described in detail how Google uses the activities of the people in our personal social networks to influence the search results we see.

“The socialization of search is more than just Tweeted URLs or Facebook Likes or LinkedIn Shares having a positive first/second-order impact on generic rankings,” Fishkin notes in his post. “It’s about influencing your social graph to see the content you share in their search results.”

Here’s an example.  The first image is my Google SERP, produced when I’m logged into my Google account (click on each to see a larger, clearer version):

Personalized search results from Google for the term "content marketing strategies"

The second image is my SERP for the same search term, produced when I’m logged out:

Results from Google for the same search term, but with personalized results turned off.

As you can see, the results are different.  Content from some colleagues of mine is featured prominently in the first result.   In this case, my friends Vicky and Sean are exerting direct influence over what content I see.

Simply put, search engines are making the assumption that internet searchers would like to see relevant content from people they know – namely, the people they, follow on Twitter and Quora, are friends with on Facebook, share connections on LinkedIn and who populate their address books – and are putting relevant content shared by those people at the top of the search results we each see.

A look at my Google account settings. Google "found" my Quora account and prompts me to add it to my connected accounts.

Google isn’t alone in using the social graph to influence search results.  Facebook and Bing have teamed up and are starting to roll out a variety of features in Bing search results, including the display of relevant items liked by the searcher’s Facebook friends.  The two companies describe their approach as one that adds personal recommendations from people you know to your search results, in order to aid decision making.

Well, this is a bit of a game-changer for brands, in a few different ways.   For anyone concerned with marketing communications and public relations, this is big news.   And for brands, I think the message from the search engines is clear.

1)      Developing credible presences on networks like Twitter and Facebook is now an imperative.

2)      Encouraging employees to build their own professional presences on social networks is officially a very, very good idea.

Back to what the burgeoning influence of the social graph on search results means for communicators.

  • For a savvy media pro, a credible and authentic Twitter presence is the new Rolodex.  A vibrant social presence – in which connections with media, bloggers and analysts are cultivated – can keep one top-of-mind with people who really matter, and can mean your messages – the press releases you tweet, the thoughtful answers you leave on Quora, the content you share across networks – will be seen in your connections’ search results.
  • For brands seeking search engine visibility, the benefits of a robust social presence are clear – developing social connections with stakeholders (journalists, bloggers, customers, employees, etc.)

Something else brands need to consider is the importance of the conversations occurring in social channels.  How people describe, discuss and refer to a brand or industry segment is going to affect search results.  Brands need to monitor social media and stay on top of the ongoing conversation – changes in audience sentiment or vernacular can have a real-time impact on search results, and can also offer a tuned-in brand opportunity to connect and capitalize upon conversation trends.

The underlying trend is a relentless drive toward authenticity by the search engines.  Powered by the sharing and interaction of the social layer, content sharing and the language we each use when we share content are rapidly becoming the equivalents of backlinks and metadata to SEO seven years ago:  these factors play a key role in how search engines evaluate, index and display content in search results.

Within this authenticity trend is another important opportunity for organizations to shape the conversations in the social network, and that is brand journalism. Brands that can identify interesting people and stories within their businesses and tell those stories authentically will be a step ahead of everyone else in the online visibility game.   Content that is interesting and unique captures audience attention, and they are likely to share it with their connections.   Audiences aren’t fooled by puffery, however.  A successful brand publishing strategy absolutely has to make content quality its cornerstone.

Author Sarah Skerik (@sarahskerik) is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media.

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