June 5, 2007 at 7:02 am · Filed under Uncategorized, Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing
I was doing some keyword research and was wondering how the new universal search results were playing out. I had blogged about how it was changing the landscape on search results and thought I would do a followup to determine if any changes had occur since then and there has.
It wasn’t a surprise to me but it looks as if they (Google) has started to scale back on the supplemental results (News, Video and Local) they are providing in searches. Local and Video seemed to be holding steady with Youtube being placed 5th in video searches and local not changing at all. News on the other hand looks be on the way out or at the least significantly scaled back.
There is no doubt that there are several reasons for this but the one I think of first is the natural results becoming polluted with non popular results as shown above. Look at the big fat ZERO page rank associated with the Youtube listing. That result knocked someone that did have a decent page regarding that term off the front page. And for what? Because someone is too lazy to add video to the term or click on the video search link on the results page?
Google has a dedicated section for news and it is very simple to navigate to. It isn’t that hard to click one more time for specialized results for the search term. The Blog, News, Video and Local searches are all excellent sources of information and trying to cram them on the first page of natural searches is not a good idea in my opinion.
I am a HUGE fan of automation and reducing the number of clicks it takes to get the content you are seeking. However you need to look at it from another perspective. If quality sources are being bumped off the front page of results due to news or video results and the surfer that is conducting the search could care less about video or news results, well you just made it harder for him/her to find what they were looking for. You following me?
Here are two searches that had contained news results embedded in the regular search results and now neither of them have news results embedded in them.
Dallas Cowboys
Tennessee Titans
June 4, 2007 at 9:33 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
A Bloggy Tag Two-fer
1. How full is your glass? Always half full.
2. What kind of glass is it? The glass is a regular drinking glass.
3. What’s in the glass? Diet Dr. Pepper
4. Reasons for #1, #2, and #3. I always look on the bright side but often have to remind myself and family just how lucky we are to have each other and our health.
June 1, 2007 at 9:06 am · Filed under Uncategorized, Internet Marketing, Social Media
Probably the biggest news this week is Facebook opening it’s social platform up to developers. Why is this important? It shows the movement toward a more social society.
- Facebook announced last week to an audience of 750 developers and partners it was opening up its social network to the development of applications. The platform for this next generation of Facebook will be called Facebook Platform. Facebook Platform launched with 65 developer partners and 85 applications.
To show some of the power of the Facebook Platform, an example application called Video was offered that allows the sharing of videos between friends within Facebook. Mobile uploading of video is also supported directly by the application.
The new Facebook Platform will not only open up new services for Facebook users, but also new business opportunities, since Facebook will allow developers to make money from their applications through the use of advertising or transactions.
Although it had been rumored Ebay officially announced their purchase of StumbleUpon. Interesting, another social related news event this week.
- The $75 million cash acquisition gives eBay access to about 2.3 million people who have filled out profiles at StumbleUpon, founded in 2001 by three Canadian software engineers in Calgary. The venture capital-funded company, which recently relocated to San Francisco, is considered a pioneer of the so-called “Web 3.0″ niche.
Shall we go for three in a row? Sure why not we are on a roll. CBS picks up online music site, Last.fm for 280 million in cash.
- London-based Last.fm, which claims 15 million active users in 200 countries, allows users to create communities of interest that include both listeners and musicians. The Last.fm site includes a social recommendation engine that builds a profile of each listener’s tastes and provides links to other users with similar tastes. The site, which was founded in 2002, also provides custom radio streams
It seems it has been a social dominated week to say the least. So much so it has cemented my ambitions for a new project I will be heading up. I have been considering doing something in the social vertical now for some time but these announcements this week validate some of the assumptions I have had recently. If you are interested in learning more you can contact me but I want to keep it hush hush until after we officially launch.
