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13 items tagged "Engines and Optimization"

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Search Engine Roundtable

• 

  Careful What You Search For When Using So.cl

  Fetched: May 24th, 2012, 2:12am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  A few days ago, Microsoft quietly launched their own social network named So.cl.

  Yea, it is a lot like Google+, Facebook and all of them in a Microsoft wrapper. I am not doing a review here, Danny did one at MarketingLand.

  One of the features is you can share your searches done on Bing or other default search providers directly with your friends in your timeline.

  Sean Carlos shared a picture on Google+ of one of his "friends" timelines showing a recent search done on Flickr for the term [nude].

  Yea, with the new Bing you can also share your searches but you need to do it explicitly. I think this is more passive and by default, your searches will show up if you are searching through So.cl?

  Just be careful what you search for within these networks.

  Forum discussion at Google+.

  
  

• 

  Facebook IPO: Zuckerberg's $499,999 Salary Cut

  Fetched: February 3rd, 2012, 1:55am CET by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  As expected, Facebook filed their IPO registration with the SEC.

  The numbers are fascinating, and I was tweeting some of it. We posted some nice charts on the numbers and Danny did the S-1 review at Marketing Land.

  • 2011 $3.7 Billion In Revenue
  • 2011 $1 Billion In Net Income
  • 12% Of That Revenue Came From Zynga
  • Mark Zuckerberg salary for 2012 is $500,000 and for 2013 is $1.00

  I am not going to go through all the numbers, there are tons of headlines on Techmeme that cover all of that. But Facebook did some up their user numbers in this nice graphic:

  So will you be buying into the IPO?

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  Focus On The User: Facebook Don't Be Evil Google Tool

  Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  The big news from yesterday was from Facebook who built a bookmarklet tool that aims at changing how Google shows Google+ results in the new Google Plus Your World launch.

  It is fairly simple, you install the bookmarklet, click it when on the Google results, and the Google+ results will change to either Twitter, Facebook or another social network.

  The campaign is named Focus on the User and they write:

  How much better would social search be if Google surfaced results from all across the web? The results speak for themselves. We created a tool that uses Googleâs own relevance measure-the ranking of their organic search results-to determine what social content should appear in the areas where Google+ results are currently hardcoded.

  All of the information in this demo comes from Google itself, and all of the ranking decisions are made by Google's own algorithms. No other services or APIs are accessed.

  Here is what it does:

  Pretty clear? It does more but those are to examples, many more examples over here.

  Danny Sullivan has a great write up over here and here is a video demo:

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  The New Twitter

  Fetched: December 10th, 2011, 10:13am CET by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  The big news yesterday was that Twitter announced the launch of their new Twitter design. The new design is aimed at making it easier to use and easier to find and discover things within the ecosystem.

  My favorite parts of the announcement is a new TweetDeck for Chrome and Mac OS App Store plus the new app and finally the embeddable tweets.

  On the search side, Greg Sterling reported that the search was improve but said, "although no one could tell me specifically what they were."

  Here is an embedded tweet:

  I like the new TweetDeck for Mac OS

  — Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) December9, 2011

  You can see the embed tweet link when you view the tweet detail page:

  Then a pop up box comes up with the embed options:

  To see more details on the new features, designs and ability to discover new content, see fly.twitter.com. To get it yourself, just update your mobile app and Twitter should give you the new features on Twitter.com soon after.

  If you are a brand, you probably want to read this.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  Facebook Launches Timeline

  Fetched: September 24th, 2011, 10:06am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  Facebook yesterday announced a new feature named Timeline.

  As Facebook describes it:

  With timeline, now you have a home for all the great stories you've already shared. They don't just vanish as you add new stuff.

  Timeline is wider than your old profile, and it's a lot more visual. The first thing you'll notice is the giant photo right at the top. This is your cover, and it's completely up to you which of your photos you put here. As you scroll down past your cover, you'll see your posts, photos and life events as they happened in time. You choose what's featured on your timeline. You can star your favorites to double their size or hide things altogether.

  Here is a video demo of how it works:

  Greg Finn does a good job summarizing many of the features at Search Engine Land.

  A WebmasterWorld thread has people saying this is all a bit "creepy", other's saying "too much change too soon," but others are finding it pretty cool.

  I am not sure, I rarely put personal stuff on Facebook, so I am not sure how this would apply to me yet.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  Facebook Losing Users?

  Fetched: June 15th, 2011, 1:42pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  Inside Facebook reports on recent data from their gold reporting service that Facebook has lost 6 million users from their U.S. base.

  Inside Facebook said Facebook in the "United States lost nearly 6 million users, falling from 155.2 million at the start of May to 149.4 million at the end of it. This is the first time the country has lost users in the past year."

  US wasn't the only place losing users, "Canada also fell significantly, by 1.52 million down to 16.6 million, although it has been fluctuating around that number for the past year. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom, Norway and Russia all posted losses of more than 100,000."

  They posted the top gaining countries:

  Webmasters and SEOs are discussing what is going on here. Supposedly, the data Inside Facebook uses to get this data is from Facebook's advertising tool. The tool may have reporting bugs leading to issues with these marketshare reports - so it is hard to be 100% positive that Facebook lost 6 million users in the US market.

  That being said, a WebmasterWorld thread has some people saying they are not surprised. They feel Facebook is becoming too commercial and at the same time people are leaving because it is overwhelming and too time consuming for users. Meaning, people want to focus more on work and less on social things.

  I am not too sure.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  44% Say Social Search Signals Don't Improve Search Results

  Fetched: June 9th, 2011, 4:56pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  Last week we ran a poll asking Are Search Results Better With Social Ranking Signals?

  We now have over a 100 responses and I wanted to share those results:

  • 44% said social search signals do not improve search results
  • 29% said they are not sure if the social signals improve search results or not
  • 27% said social search signals do indeed improve search results

  I am pretty confident that Google and Bing have tested the quality of those search results with social ranking factors on and off and have shown that they do improve search quality. But this is the perception of webmasters and SEOs.

  Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.

  Note: This story was written earlier this week and scheduled to be published today.

  
  

• 

  73% Say Personalized Search Results Is Censorship

  Fetched: June 8th, 2011, 8:04pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  About a month ago, I showed you all a presentation given by Eli Pariser at TED named Beware online "filter bubbles".

  The argument is very convincing, and I strongly recommend you watch it, if you have not done so already.

  It makes the argument that personalization on the web, which is growing and growing - is a form of censorship and we shouldn't have it in many cases.

  So I ran a poll asking SEOs, who should fundamentally understand the reason and technical pieces of personalized search results, if they felt it was a form of censorship and 73% said yes, it is a form of censorship.

  I asked: "Is Personalization A Form Of Censorship?"

  • 73% said Yes
  23% said No
  • 4% said other

  I believe I was part of the 23% this time.

  Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

  Note: This story was written earlier this week and scheduled to be published today.

  
  

• 

  Twitter Search Gets Smarter

  Fetched: June 4th, 2011, 11:19pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  Twitter announced they have improved Twitter Search by adding relevancy and personalization to the search results.

  Twitter said, "Not only will it deliver more relevant Tweets when you search for something or click on a trending topic, but it will also show you related photos and videos, right there on the results page."

  If you look at the Twitter Engineering Blog you can learn a bit more about what this means.

  In our new search experience, we show search results that are most relevant to a particular user. So search results are personalized, and we filter out the Tweets that do not resonate with other users.

  To support relevance filtering and personalization, we needed three types of signals:

  (1) Static signals, added at indexing time
  (2) Resonance signals, dynamically updated over time
  (3) Information about the searcher, provided at search time

  There is a lot more detail on how this works at the engineering blog. But let me show you the differences in the results:

  Here is the default search view, which sorts Twitter search results by "top" results. Take notice that there are huge gabs in the timeline as to minutes between tweets. Clearly, Twitter is filtering out results here:

  If you look deeper, you will see that you can click "top" and change it to "all." It will then show a timeline of all tweets that have query word in them. See the difference?

  How about personalization? Well, check out me logged in versus not logged in:

  Logged In:

  Logged Out:

  See, my tweet didn't seem relevant if I am not logged in.

  Here is a video demo from Twitter on this new release:

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  Are Social Ranking Signals Making A Better Search Result?

  Fetched: June 4th, 2011, 11:19pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  There is an excellent verbal poll running at Sphinn now asking SEOs if they feel that social ranking signals are making for a better set of search results. It is a good question - do you feel the search results are now better since Google and Bing began integrating social factors such as Facebook Likes, Google +1, Tweets and other social sharing features into the algorithm?

  Take our poll:

  Are Search Results Better With Social Ranking Signals?

  Here are two comments from the Sphinn thread:

  Jill Whalen said:

  I don't see how we'd be able to know what difference social signals is making.

  That said, I do like when I'm logged in, to see the things people in my social networks are saying or recommending based on my searches (as long as I'm not looking for clean results for business purposes).

  Matt McGee added:

  For the most part, I feel the same way. I think there's some value in seeing a note that a certain friend/peer has shared/liked some URL in the search results -- or some local business in Google Places (which also mixes social elements into the UX). But I'm not a fan of the Blekko implementation where Facebook status updates and/or comment threads are shown next to search results. Too much clutter and not enough value in that, in my opinion.

  We did have some SEOs complain that the results are doomed due to social ranking signals.

  Please do take our poll and be as biased as you like. And also join the conversation at the thread.

  Forum discussion at Sphinn.

  
  

• 

  Twitter Launches Follow Button: Do You "Like" It?

  Fetched: June 1st, 2011, 10:40pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  Twitter has announced their new Follow Button. The follow button will allow users logged into Twitter to follow you directly on third-party sites by clicking the button, for users not logged in, you will be taken to the Twitter profile.

  Here is my follow button (feel free to follow, if you don't):

  Follow @rustybrick

  Here is the Search Engine Roundtable follow button:

  Follow @seroundtable

  As you can see, you can customize the follow button.

  You can create your own over at Twitter's resources and for even more customization methods see the developer documentation.

  This announcement came the day before Google is expected to launch the Google +1 button for publishers.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  Is Social Signaling The End Of Expert Content?

  Fetched: May 25th, 2011, 9:14am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  There is an outstanding thread developing at WebmasterWorld on the topic of social search ranking factors versus content ranking factors. The discussion is fairly thought provoking, which is why forums still rock.

  One webmaster is on the verge of complaining that Google and Bing are trumping their social search ranking features and downplaying the importance of quality and authoritative content. He said out of frustration:

  As social factors increase in importance, the point of creating original, thought leading, anything OTHER than simple mass content is removed.

  I'm seriously stunned here. I hope I've got this wrong, but not only has Google crushed businesses like mine that trade in ideas and content, it has the potential to significantly damage the society at large by LIMITING (unintentionally) the spread of the very information that runs the economic engines of this planet.

  Some pretty strong words but is this really Google or Bing's goal? Are social factors going to take over the ranking game or just add some weight here and there?

  There is no doubt in my mind that Google and Bing want the most authoritative content to rank the highest but when there are two pages that are close on the same level of expert content, which should they rank higher?

  Also, think about social factors and what Google and Bing use to determine what is authoritative. Links, at least originally, were a form of social liking. If someone linked to your content, it meant they liked it and thus it ranked higher. Social liking or +1ing is a form of that.

  Do you not think that if you have awesome content that it wouldn't be shared through social channels? Even if it wasn't - people would reference it, link to it, and hopefully it will trace back to that source at the end.

  Personally, I am not worried. There are many cases of the original source not ranking higher than a site covering it later - but is that the goal of Google or Bing? The answer to that is the answer to if you should be worried or not.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  1/4th Of Twitter Users Don't Use Twitter

  Fetched: December 11th, 2010, 12:49pm CET by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Social Search Engines Optimization  

  Pew Internet announced a report they released on Twitter usage. You can download the PDF report over here.

  Everyone is talking about the 8% figure. 8% of Americans are on Twitter. Wow! Most people think that is a small number, to me, that is huge. I bet it doesn't compare with Facebook, but 8% of American's have used Twitter! That is big.

  But they also say 21% of those Twitter users don't read content on Twitter. They may post content, but they do not read content. In a sense, it might be automated or just random tweets or they might not tweet at all. Either way, about a quarter of Twitter users don't really use Twitter. Almost half barely use Twitter - they check in every week or so, which is not the way to use Twitter - ask any Twitter user.

  So I'd say probably 50% of the 8% really use Twitter. So maybe that number is closer to 4% of American's use Twitter. Maybe that number is more realistic.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.