Facebook

Facebook’s dedication to the wellbeing of it’s members has been under scrutiny on more than one occasion, and as much as everyone realises that Facebook has to act in its own interests for the purpose of profits, it’s also been highlighted that it should do more for the loyal throng of followers. The rejection by the company to implement a free application that will serve only to benefit its users does not reflect the attitude of a company looking after its members. After the Ceops report whereby Facebook had to aknowledge that its own system failed so many members, it was impossible to reject the proposal, although there is still some debate over whether or not it is the right course of action to take.

Social Media

Many members of the public believe that social media providers should take more responsibility for the welfare of its members, especially after reports claim that Facebook’s system proved ineffective for so many. It became apparent that it took far too long to get offensive, abusive and bullying content removed from profile pages, and that until the matter was addressed there was no form of support for sufferers and their families, which all other social media sites offer. Although the addition of a panic button will give instant access to experts that can help with matters relating to grooming and potential sexual abuse, many parents and users themselves are saying that it is cyber bullying that needs to be addressed. With up to 50% of all reports filed to Facebook believed to be associated with bullying, one can only hope that it’s internal reporting system is going to improved too.

Internet Marketing

If Google does plan to make these changes permanent, internet marketing campaigns will need to integrate local search with organic SEO and paid search to achieve a high listing. The results of the testing as noticed by eMarketing consultant Linda Buquet, are that the results are a better balance and blend of relevancy, and do not favour any one optimisation strategy. However, if a business has localised search phrases, this could offer the perfect internet marketing opportunity to capitalise on those search terms.

Local Search

The floating map allows more organic listings to appear above the fold and therefore allow businesses with a localised search interest to concentrate less on headterms and instead focus on optimising for phrases that will boost the relevancy in local search. The new layout also makes reviews a more prominent feature, which in itself could signify the changes are being made to meet the increasing demand of mobile search as Androids and iPhones become an ever more popular platform for browsing the internet.

SEO Guidelines

Google’s ethical SEO guidelines are put in place to ensure that search results are demonstrative of what is actually on the landing page to give  user-relevant results. Sites that use cloaking therefore are going against these guidelines, which will result in them being banned from Google’s listings. When Adwords help pages mysteriously dropped from search results it transpired that whoever was working on the product pages in question had violated the rules by hiding sections of page content.

A spokesperson at Google confirmed that Adwords support pages were indeed showing the user different content to the information being offered to the crawler, and stated that this was an inadvertent mistake rather than blatant breach of the guidelines. The mistake, however, does back up the fact that those optimising Google product pages don’t have any specialist knowledge just because they are working for a company that specialises in search.

Ethical SEO

As soon as the error was noticed, Google withdrew the pages, and have begun an investigation to determine how it happened. This is not the first time Google have violated the guidelines, they were banned for cloaking back in 2005, but is a warning to SEO professionals to be vigilant with internal infrastructure. Failure to ensure cached and non-cached versions of a page match up could result in being banned for unethical SEO practices. Whereas Google could state that it was a genuine error that was immediately dealt with, another company may find that the penalties are more severe, and that problem pages are banned altogether despite ethical SEO being at the core of business practice.

.CO TLD

Many in the industry will remember the launch of .tv, .biz, .pro and all the rest, with each one being heralded as better than dot com. To date, this has yet to actually happen. It has allowed some companies and businesses to access a domain name that fits their trade without being too long, unless of course it’s really competitive, in which case it is highly unlikely they’d be able to afford it. .CO’s USP is that the extension is “Easy to remember, simple to use, and easy to understand; More than 75% of respondents associated .CO with ‘company,’ ‘corporation,’ or other commercial endeavours —but .CO is not confined only to these meanings.”- So the difference between .Co and all the other extension is?

Online Marketing

.CO Internet S.A.S. is putting emphasis on online marketing potential through brand promotion. Instead of having to take second, third or fourth best when you want to get your business name or trade in your domain name by inserting hyphens, adding a town name or giving a general description of your site to generate a 500 character url, SMEs now have the chance to choose a concise and hopefully relevant domain with the .CO extension. From an online marketing point of view, having what you do/sell/provide in your domain name is certainly an advantage, but the biggest potential here is to cash in on .com or .co.uk typos. Although .CO Internet S.A.S. has not released a ‘price list’, it stands to reason that the generic names (such as shoes, jeans, tiles, sofas etc) will be the most expensive and therefore most profitable for the company; as a result the .CO boom looks like it is already heading for doom.

Facebook SEO

Optimising a website so it appears in Facebook listings can easily be done by adding the social media platform’s ‘social plug-ins’ enabling bookers to like the site; and because more and more people are using FB to search, it is an SEO opportunity that not many businesses, bands, manufacturers and entertainment venues will want to miss. Social media has taken over from pornography as the number one reason to go online, which is one very good reason to start optimising for FB. Ranking factors for the semantic search include the usual SEO favourites, such as having the keyword in the title, or name and in the Wall post content. Having a high number of fans or friends is also a factor; the two combining to create what should be genuine, relevant and therefore authoritative listings. Organic SEO in other words, with the ‘like’ button essentially acting as a link.

Internet Marketing

Using FB as part of an internet marketing strategy makes perfect sense, but the idea that it may one day take over from Google is being dismissed as unrealistic. Although in excess of 50,000 websites chose to add FB’s social media plug-ins to their site within just the first week of the launch, this only boosted search via the platform to 2.7% in the US. With Google still controlling in the region of 63% of the American search market, it is clear that revenue for internet marketing will go to the most popular search platform, but optimising for FB will be part of an overall strategy.

Google Health

The answer, nearly 12 months later is a lot clearer. Google have spent a year making sure it’s own health related directory ranks up top by using trusted information from all the medical content listed within the search engine, and now it has done that, it is adding another feather to the Google Health cap; pharmaceutical information. As an already popular place to gather information about a medical condition, Google Health ‘s new offering will make it more attractive to users, where they can view what medication they should be used to treat it, what contraindications medications they have been prescribed for the condition might have; and lo and behold, a sponsored advert placed by pharmaceutical companies and drug stores where the medication can be bought.

Online Marketing

The connection is clearly one of monetary gain for Google though online marketing revenue, despite the fact that a year ago the product manager for Google Health, Roni Zeiger, denied any such correlation. When asked by Search Engine mogul Barry Schwartz about monetization of Google Health, Zeiger told him that it is about getting the answer as quickly as possible to the searcher and that there no current plans or even future plans to add ads to the Google Health property. The new Google Health that has been rolled out in the US is definitely sporting ads by major pharmaceutical companies; and although it is clear Google have been working closely to provide users with medically sound and relevant information in association with the National Institutes of Health; it is also clear that they have found a way to tap into the industry’s $900 million online marketing budget.

The publishing industry is gradually turning to implementing a subscription system for readers in a bid to remain profitable as the interest in print publishing diminishes. However, to ensure that people will pay for news, the publishers have had to insist that the content is not available for free online. Consequently, this has meant that Google is not able to offer a whole heap of search results to users, and therefore has been working hard to find a way to monetize the move for the benefit of news networks, and Google itself.

Internet Marketing

Google’s success still relies on popularity, and even though a course of action may not be profitable at first, if it offers internet users what they want, Google will make it happen. The only way to be able to monetize content though, is through promoting internet marketing. Using their talents for crawling content and delivering relevant results for a query Google are probably best placed for helping publishers make money from internet marketing and delivering users what they really want from a paid content service.

Google Checkout is already in place and is used by millions worldwide and Google has the ability to crawl pages even though they are behind a paywall. These result will then appear in listings, with several options for the reader either have a sneak preview for free, buy the news for a small amount of money or subscribe to a whole package on a monthly basis, which will allow access to high quality news from a range of sources. The trick is in getting people to reveal their personal data when they subscribe and for their online preferences to be tracked to then implement targeted advertising.

Google Newspass

It is still unclear when Google Newspass will be released or where it will be released first. Original reports are stemming from Italy –where it is presumed the system will be tested – but Google are not giving anything away. Their official statement concludes with “We don’t pre-announce products and don’t have anything to announce at this time.”

Twitter Places

Twitter Places has already partnered up with Foursquare and a number of other companies with valuable data such as Tom Tom. This means that Twitter has the resources to match Google Places extremely fast by creating a Twitter page for each location. Users will then be able to visit that page and find out what other Tweeters have to say about it. Implications? If the chef is having a bad night and all the customers are tweeting about it, you could stand to lose a lot of money. On the other hand, if your service is outstanding and where the party is at, everyone in town will be there.

The power of real time results will mean that users of Twitter Places can access up to the minute information about a venue, business or service, which they will inherently trust more than a testimonials page, marketing content on a website; or more importantly, Google news feeds and blogs that may have been ‘tailored’ or out of date. The power of Twitter Places’ success lies in the very nature of Twitter, which is why it has the potential to oust Google as a preferred real time localised search tool.

Localised Search Marketing

The repercussion is that search marketing strategies will have to adapt to include real time social media campaigns to ensure that any bad publicity is watered down as necessary by implementing favourable real time tweets. This has the potential to weaken Twitter Places as the localised search tool we all really want, but just as SEO campaigns aim to use strategic manoeuvres to stay ahead of competitors that may use negative press as a marketing tactic, applying brand protection to a Twitter Places page may be just another move that is essential for online success.