Most of us have noticed the new and improved Google search results pages by now. The biggest thing (in my opinion) is the new left hand column you get when you click the new “Show Options” link at the top of the results page. Whereas before if you wanted to search from a certain time frame, or make other refinements to the search, you had to go to the Advanced Search options page, now you can do a lot of those refinements right from your original results page.

And there are a bunch of other nifty goodies in the left hand column, too, as you can see in the first screen shot.

One great option is being able to choose from “Visited Pages” and “Not Yet Visited” pages. This is great if you know you found a good site the other day, but you can’t quite remember its URL and didn’t bookmark it. It’s also great if you try a search several different ways and keep getting results that you’ve already visited but are not interested in. It seems to me that this could actually help bring a little more attention to non-first page results, though it probably won’t be revolutionary in that regard.

The “Related Searches” option is handy if you don’t quite know how to phrase what you’re looking for. For example, I was recently trying to find one of those rolling laundry organizers with a bar across the top to hang up clothes, but I didn’t really know what it was called. So I put in the keywords I did know: laundry hanger rolling organizer, and with related searches I was eventually able to find what I wanted.

Maybe you’re wondering what all the fuss is about because, after all, it doesn’t look significantly different from before. But it actually is a pretty big deal because Google tends to make changes to its search pages in tiny, homeopathic doses, and only after researching and considering them from every angle.

Something I’ve recently discovered even though it’s been around for almost a year is the Wonder Wheel. It’s another of those left hand column options. As you can see in the screen shot, when I searched on “smart phone” then clicked on “Wonder Wheel,” I got a visual representation of a bunch of topics related to smart phones. If you see a spoke of the Wonder Wheel that interests you (I chose “shoe phone” because, well, what could be cooler?), click on that spoke, and it will spawn its own Wonder Wheel, as you can see in the next screen shot.

Had I been interested in the history of the smart phone, I could have chosen “Timeline” and been presented with a handy, searchable timeline.

Another pair of options that can be extremely useful, particularly if you don’t have time to waste, is the “Fewer Shopping Sites” and “More Shopping Sites” choices. Look at the screen shot of the search I did on “fabric dyes.” If I wanted to learn about how they work, how they’re formulated, and stuff like that, I don’t necessarily care about the shopping sites and local sellers of fabric dye. I want to know about it, not buy it. So I can choose “Fewer Shopping Sites.”

On the other hand, suppose you needed to get an anniversary present for your girlfriend – say a cashmere bathrobe – and you needed to get it ASAP because you forgot it was your anniversary this weekend. You probably couldn’t care less that cashmere is made from the soft belly hair of a certain breed of goat from the Himilayas. You just want to know how to get your hands on a cashmere bathrobe as soon as possible. So you can click “More Shopping Sites” to refine your search in that direction.

You can also click on “Page Previews” which is another handy tool if you’re trying to find your way back to a site that you should have bookmarked but didn’t. They’re little snapshots of web pages displayed in the right hand column, as you can see in the screen shot with Page Previews on.

So there’s a lot going on in the left hand part of your search results page real estate if you want it. The middle column looks pretty much the way it always has, but incorporates some of the newer types of results Google tosses out there, like Social Media results. The right hand column looks pretty much the same, too, unless you have Page Previews turned on.

What does this mean in terms of SEO?

Since many of the new left hand column choices are time sensitive, the use of fresh content appears to be somewhat more in demand. It also means that your efforts at using social media like Facebook and Twitter to promote your site may start paying off more, since there’s a “Social” choice in the left hand column for refining your searches.

One thing that SEO pundits are on the watch for is the impact of YouTube’s auto captioning feature that creates captions for videos using voice recognition software. If you don’t want to take chances with the captioning, you can edit your video captions or upload your own transcription for your videos, ensuring that your keywords aren’t just tags, but are found in text directly corresponding to your video content as well.

This new search results design from Google may not hit you over the head with its new features. It took me a while to use the ones that I used to have to go to Advanced Search to use, and a little while longer to figure out what some of the other options were. But though the changes are fairly subtle, and even though you can turn the new options off or on, they’re worth checking out, because they really do help make your searches as relevant as possible. With this in mind you’ve got all the more reason, as a webmaster, to optimize your site’s content, both on-page and off.

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Just over a year ago, Google made some changes in their algorithm that appeared to be giving weight to “brands.” Now, “brand” is a short word that’s loaded with a lot of meaning. When this change took place, there were plenty of people running around in circles waving their arms in the air thinking that the big, rich corporations were going to dominate the search engine rankings and the whole purpose of organic search would be lost forever (the purpose being bringing users relevant results that could be from anyone, anywhere if they were right on target).

Fortunately, the passage of time has let people make some more considered analyses of that change. To get up to speed, let’s take a quick look at some of the ancient history (dating back to 2003) in search engine technology.

In November 2003, something now called the Google Florida Update took place. While only the insiders at Google really know what happened back then, the results were doom for several types of sites:

• sites with inbound anchor text that was repetitive
• keyword stuffing in the page title and on-page
• sites lacking supporting or related vocabulary in the copy

At that point, SEO became complicated enough that it started taking experts to figure it out rather than just armchair SEO quarterbacks. Before you could rank (eventually) by buying and / or trading links with your target keyword in the anchor text.

While the infamous Florida Update was the most earth-shattering, several other changes took place in the Google search algorithm that definitely had an effect on rankings. There was one change that was so hard on artificial anchor text manipulation that Google actually filtered out some brands using their real, authentic names. Here in 2010, the Google search algorithm is a little like the U.S. Tax Code. It’s so complex that even the ones deep inside Google sometimes don’t anticipate collateral effects and depend on SEO experts outside Google to bring them to their attention.

But some of the changes are widely understood. In January 2005 Google proposed the rel=nofollow tag as a hedge against blog spam. By September 2005, you could be considered a spammer if you bought links without the rel=nofollow tag on them. Several social websites adopted the nofollow tag, which diminished the juiciness of the link juice that came from being a known publisher creating linkable content.

In 2007, Google started its Universal Search, which stirred in content from vertical search databases with the organic results. The result was that Google News, YouTube and other video content, Google Maps and Local, Google Product Search, and Google Books were promoted. Toss in 10,000 or more remote quality raters and you could no longer manipulate search results on the cheap unless you had a trusted site that people would stand behind.

In October 2008, Google’s Eric Schmidt gave some SEO information that went a little beyond the standard “Write good content” mantra that Google and SEO researchers tend to harp on (I know I’m guilty of it too.) Here is a quote from Schmidt to a bunch of magazine executives from that time.

“The internet is fast becoming a “cesspool” where false information thrives. Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool … Brand affinity is clearly hard wired. It’s so fundamental to human existence that it’s not going away.”

He also gave strong hits that word relationships would be gaining in importance.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if Google understood the meaning of your phrase rather than just the words that are in that phrase? We have a lot of discoveries in that area that are going to roll out in the next little while.”

So why did Google start giving more weight to branding? Because there are tons of affiliate sites exploiting SERPs. They outrank established businesses and big brands. If you’re a user, it’s best to have the first SERP contain a combination of affiliates, big brands, and other sites to maximize your options as a searcher. The results now – just over a year after the increased emphasis on brand, show a variety of results. The three screen shots are parts of the first SERP on the search phrase “health insurance.” You have sponsored links, results from the big insurance brands, some informational (wiki) links, plus news and book results. This doesn’t look like a wholesale takeover of the first SERP based on the size of brand.

Potential Problems

If Google likes established brands, then they’ll cut out a lot of dodgy sites. But, will big brands always mean non-threatening, vanilla content? Brands don’t necessarily answer searchers’ needs, and there is no guarantee that big brands equal quality content. Quality can often be found in smaller, newer sites that have not had the time to establish themselves. That’s supposed to be one of the greatest things about the internet, right? Your good content can theoretically be seen by anyone with an internet connection. There’s a danger that if the first SERP looks like a page of ads for the biggest and most dominant brands, that people will search elsewhere.

So far that doesn’t seem to be the case. The change seemed to only affect upper level keywords, mostly one-word key phrases, and these have been shown to be precisely the keywords that don’t convert well. Ranking for keywords that actually bring in revenue does still appear to be spread well beyond the big brands.

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In December 2009 Google rolled out Personalized Search for users who were not signed in, and in over 40 languages. Personalized search has been around for awhile for signed in users who have web history enabled. This allows Google to fine-tune your search results based on past searches and on the sites you’ve clicked on in the past. This is how Google tries to optimize searches for you when your search terms have more than one meaning.

For example, Googling the term “blackberry” while signed in with web history on gets the results you see on the first screen shot. From my search history it is clear that I’m much more likely to be searching for information about the BlackBerry PDA than about the actual fruit. On the other hand, my mom, who does a lot of baking and jam-making, would probably end up with search results about the fruit rather than about the electronic device, based on her history of looking up recipes.

So now that personalized search is on offer for signed out users, exactly what does that mean?

It means that personalized search can use an anonymous cookie on your browser to base your search results on 180 days of search activity linked to this cookie. This is completely separate and apart from your Web History and your Google account. When you have the option of personalized results while signed out, you will see a link that says View Customizations in the top right corner of the results page, as you can see in the second screen shot. When you click on it, you can see how the results are customized and, if you want, you can turn off this type of customization, as you can see in the third screen shot.

Now, there are obviously computers where lots of different people search, so the browser cookie might be influenced by multiple people’s search activity. To protect the privacy of the non-signed-in users, you can’t actually view the specific search activity upon which the signed-out personalized search is based. Plus, you can turn off personalized search settings for signed-out personalized search altogether if you want.

As for signed-in personalized search, you can clear the history upon which your personalized results are based at any time to protect your privacy. That way, if you stay signed in and someone else wants to know what you’ve been searching on, they won’t be able to do it through your personalized search history. Of course they could still go through your web history, so if you’re concerned, you should use your browser to clear your web history.

If you’re a webmaster, you might be wondering whether personalized search, adopted on a massive scale, will affect your ability to reach the people you want to visit your website. The answer, unsatisfactory as it may be, is “Yes, and no.”

Consider this. If a user searches for, say, “pith helmets,” and visits the top result and the last two results on the first page of listings. Then those three websites will be added into the person’s personalized search data. Next time the user decides to do a search for “pith helmets” then those two sites from the bottom of the first page of results will rank higher than they would in an organic, starting from scratch search.

But what if the user finds another search result, say the 7th one on the new results page, and bookmarks it and goes there henceforth rather than searching for pith helmets anymore for the time being. But then, a few months later, he thinks that maybe there’s a better pith helmet out there so he does another search. But this time, the one he bookmarked shows up as the top result. What gives?

Even though that site didn’t do any special SEO, there it is, right at the top of our pith helmet-loving searcher. However, other searchers will find other pith helmet dealers at the top of their results pages.

So how do you, the webmaster, change your SEO strategy? Or do you need to change it? If you’re doing legitimate, white-hat ways of getting traffic to your site, then your site will be more likely to bubble to the top of the research results for personalized search. A first time searcher might find your site perched at No. 1 simply because he has already visited it a bunch of times through other routes. This is true even if your site wouldn’t be tops in an organic search.

There’s nothing really that you should change in terms of your SEO strategy. Keep doing the on-site SEO as you have been, and you’ll probably do fine. But there’s nothing wrong with using off-site SEO to build up your brand and keep your visitors happy. Again, it boils down to having great content that people will find compelling and that will make them want to come back. This helps you whether the game is organic search or personalized search.

The takeaway is this: Google personalized search isn’t so much revolutionary as evolutionary. It’s not going to take all the search engine results and shuffle them massively. It may mean that sites that focus on the mechanics of SEO without focusing on great content could lose some ranking, but even that seems unlikely. Personalized search will change things up a little on an individual basis, but it by no means throws out the concept of organic search results based on SEO.

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On Jan 27, Google promoted its social searching algorithm from the laboratory to “beta,” which means it’s now a regular search option. Reactions so far are mixed. Social searching has been praised by those who care what their friends on Twitter think of the new iPad, and criticized by those who wonder how anyone could care what their Twitter friends thinks of the iPad.

To partake of this new morsel on Google’s search buffet, you need to sign into your Google account and update your Google profile to include links to your accounts on social sites like Twitter and Facebook. But the Facebook link is a little deceptive. The only thing Google can index from Facebook are the public parts of people’s profiles. There isn’t a way for Facebook users to make their status updates available to the entire web.

So Google won’t be searching it to see what relevant things you have to say about a topic one of your Facebook friends has researched as of now. But if there is something relevant in the public part of your Facebook profile, it can use that. Somewhat ironically, FriendFeed, which is now owned by Facebook, is geared toward public information sharing, so if you are on FriendFeed and modify your Google profile to reflect this, that content will eventually become available.

You may have noticed that Facebook has an “everyone” privacy option for information you post there, but in this case “everyone” only means everyone who is signed in at Facebook rather than everyone on the entire internet. And Facebook recently said that they have no specific plans to make information available internet-wide other than what is now contained in a member’s public profile page.

What Facebook does do is let administrators of promotional Facebook pages and Facebook Groups to make these pages public on the internet. Facebook Groups are made mostly for sharing information and photos among school alumni or among people interested in a specific topic. The pages are made for public figures and businesses to have a presence on Facebook to interact with customers and fans.

Once you update your Google profile, you’ll get a message like the one in the first screenshot saying that your profile is now eligible for inclusion in social search. It doesn’t happen instantly, however. Apparently Google has to crawl your profile before the change takes place, so if you wonder why you aren’t getting the option to click on “My Social Circle” and “My Social Content” in your search results, this is why. Another reason is that as of the end of January 2010, Social Search is only available in English, and according to Google will take a few days to roll out to everyone who uses Google in English.

Social Search was officially introduced in October 2009 as yet another form of search personalization in addition to the type of specialty searches you can do now (such as Blogs, News, Scholarly Results, and Books). Social Search will also extend to Google Images, and this will make it easier to find photos shared by your friends on Flickr and Picasa. You’ll be able to do a search on “things to see in London” and theoretically get search results that include the photos your Facebook friend uploaded to Flickr from his trip to London.

Google isn’t the only search engine that wants to add social search functionality. Microsoft announced in late 2009 that it would begin adding Facebook member status updates to its real time search engine results sometime in 2010. But Microsoft is up against the same barrier as Google when it comes to only being able to mine what’s contained in public Facebook status updates. But when (if?) Facebook allows members to make status updates public, Google will evaluate the possibility of including the information contained there in Google results.

Will you notice a difference in your search engine results today? Not so much.

As you can see in the second screen shot, a search on “Twitter accounts on SEO” gives two relevant Twitter tweets from the past 24 hours, but since Google has yet to index my new improved profile with all my Twitter, Facebook, etc. information, I don’t get any results with the options of “My Social Circle” and “My Social Content” yet.

What can we take away to the advent of Social Search? As of this moment, not a lot. However, Google hopes to encourage everyone to set up or modify their Google Profile (www.google.com/profiles), which means that your Google Profile could end up becoming vital to your online identity.

Google believes that Social Search will add a layer of relevancy to search results because generally people include people in their social circles whose opinions they trust. But just because you like your former roommate, does that mean you trust his opinion on real estate investments? There are clearly cases where Social Search will be more helpful than others.

There may be unforseen consequences for people who aren’t careful. Someone who follows his “girlfriend-on-the-side” on Twitter and then does a search that returns a tweet she wrote could risk others finding out about her presence if he were to stay logged into his Google account and step away from the computer. But then again, this may not be any more likely than it already is with run-of-the-mill computer carelessness.

Is Social Search a game changer? I’m skeptical. At San Francisco’s recent Web 2.0 Summit, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg stated that “There is a very fundamental shift going on from the information Web to the social Web.” But is there? If you’re using the web to do research on a medical condition, say, how much will it matter what someone in your Facebook circle thinks of it or knows about it? My guess is that Social Search will be an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary step in search technology and usefulness.

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Lil Engine Announces OSC Certification for SEO Companies

Lil Engine, an established resource of information on SEO and internet marketing, is excited to release OSC, Organic Search Certification, as a way to verify and recommend professional SEO companies.

January 27, 2010 Winston-Salem, NC Furthering their ongoing effort to provide useful information and tools to site owners, Lil Engine now offers a certification for SEO Companies. OSC, which stands for Organic Search Certified, is a vetting process to verify the professionalism and quality of a company’s SEO techniques. Unfortunately, in the SEO industry there are a significant number of businesses that either knowingly or unknowingly are not performing quality SEO work. Concerns when choosing an SEO company range from whether or not they can achieve the results you need at the price they quote, or worse that they will engage in ‘black hat’ SEO tactics to achieve short term results that can often lead to a negative outcome in the long term . The challenge in choosing a reputable search engine optimization company is compounded by the fact that many are required to keep their client rosters confidential, making it difficult to publicize case studies and references.

An OSC certified company has been independently analyzed and examined to provide an additional level of reassurance that the company offers value, quality, and ethics. In order to receive Organic Search Certification from Lil Engine, top SEO companies must pass a thorough company analysis including complete on-site and off-site examination of client referrals. OSC companies have:

• Provided 3 confidential client references that confirm their improved search engine rankings and significant increases in targeted traffic over a specified period of time.
• They have demonstrated a history of quality SEO work on their client’s sites, as evaluated by multiple industry veterans.
• Have kept up to date with the latest SEO developments by attending conferences, industry networking, and participation in SEO forums and blogs.

SEO companies benefit from the certification by being given a company listing on Lil Engine, and by being able to display a verifiable banner in their own marketing materials. A company can apply for certification at http://www.seomoves.org/blog//seo-certification-evaluation-criteria/.

Contact:

Jen Thames

admin@lilengine.com

Lil Engine is a free comprehensive resource for webmasters and site owners sharing internet marketing information. Offerings include useful SEO tools, an SEO blog, a database of expert guides, forum, and directory.

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Watch FTC webcast live

Watch the stream live from the FTC 2 day workshop titled ‘ How will journalism survive the internet age? ‘ from Washington DC. Questions will be taken from @ftcnews during the Q & A session.

Update 4/11/09 : We will be uploading the archived videos from the webcast shortly. The webcast was a great success – for a government hosted event, the discussions where surprisingly open and informative.

(Windows Media Player required)

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The agenda:

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

9:00 am – Welcome  – Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission

9:15 am  – Remarks  – Paul Steiger, Editor-in-Chief, President and CEO, ProPublica & Former Managing Editor, The Wall Street Journal

9:30 am  – Remarks – Rick Edmonds, Media Business Analyst, The Poynter Institute & Co-author, The State of the News Media 2009

9:45 am  – Remarks  – Rupert Murdoch - Chairman and CEO, News Corp.

10:05 am – Panel – The State of Journalism Today and Tomorrow

• Mark Contreras, Chairman of the Executive Committee, The Newspaper Association of America & Senior Vice President/Newspapers, E.W. Scripps Co.
• Martin Kaiser, President, American Society of News Editor & Editor and Senior Vice President Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
• Jonathan Knee, Director, Media Program, Columbia Business School & Senior Managing Director, Evercore Partners
• Nina Link, President and CEO & Magazine Publishers of America
• Bryan Monroe, Visiting Professor, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University &  Former Vice President and Editorial Director, Ebony and Jet
• Robert Picard, Hamrin Professor of Media Economics and Director of the Media Management and Transformation Centre, Jonkoping University, Sweden
• Tonda Rush, Of Counsel, King & Ballow, On Behalf of National Newspaper Association
• David Westphal, Executive in Residence, Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, University of Southern California & Former Washington Editor, McClatchy Newspapers
• Fred Young, Retired Senior Vice President of News Hearst Television Inc.

11:35 am  – Remarks  – Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, The Huffington Post

12:00 pm – 1:30pm  – Lunch Break

1:30 pm  – Presentation  – Leonard Downie, Vice President at Large and Former Executive Editor, The Washington Post

1:45 pm – Presentation – Lem Lloyd, Vice President, Channel Sales, Yahoo!

2:00 pm – Presentation – Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager, Google

2:15 pm – Panel – Emerging Business Models for Journalism

• Chris Ahearn, President, Reuters Media, Thomson Reuters
• Mark Bide,  Rightscom Limited, Project Director, Automated Content Access Protocol
• Steven Brill, Co-Founder,  Journalism Online, LLC
• Lauren Rich Fine, Research Director, ContentNext Media
• Jeff Jarvis, Associate Professor, Director of the Interactive Program, City University of New York, Graduate School of Journalism
• Srinandan Kasi, Vice President and General Counsel, Associated Press
• Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land
• Robert Thomson, Managing Editor, The Wall Street Journal

3:45 pm  – Presentation – Mike Bloxham, Director of Insight and Research, Center for Media Design, Ball State University

4:00 pm  – Presentation – Susan Athey, Professor of Economics, Harvard University

4:15 pm  – Presentation  – David Evans, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Laws University College London & Vice Chairman of LECG Europe

4:30pm  – Panel – Online Advertising and Consumer Demand Trends

• Barbara Bacci Mirque, Executive Vice President, Communications and Best Practices, Association of National Advertisers
• Mike Bloxham, Director of Insight and Research, Center for Media Design, Ball State University
• Jeff Chester, Executive Director, Center for Digital Democracy
• Pam Horan, President, Online Publishers Association
• Joe Laszlo, Director of Research, Interactive Advertising Bureau
• John Meyer, Director of Digital Media, WTOP and Federal News Radio

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

9:00 am – Welcome  – Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission

9:15 am – Presentation – James Hamilton, Charles S. Sydnor Professor of Public Policy Professor of Political Science and Economics & Director, DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, Sanford School of  Public Policy, Duke University

9:30 am – Presentation – Matthew Gentzkow, Professor of Economics, Neubauer Family Faculty Fellow, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

9:45 am  - Presentation – Karen Dunlap, President and CEO, The Poynter Institute

10:00 am  – Panel – Public and Foundation-Funded Journalism

• Joaquin Alvarado, Senior Vice President for Diversity and Innovation, Corporation for Public Broadcasting
• Tom Leonard, University Librarian and Professor in the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley
• Charles Lewis,  Executive Editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop, American University School of Communication
• Mark MacCarthy, Adjunct Professor, Communication, Culture and Technology Program,  Georgetown University
• Jon McTaggart,  Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, American Public Media
• Eric Newton, Vice President, Journalism Program, Knight Foundation
• Vivian Schiller, President and CEO,  National Public Radio
• Josh Silver, Executive Director, Free Press

11:45 am – 1:00pm – Lunch Break

1:00 pm – Panel - Reducing the Costs of Journalism

• Bill Adair, Editor, PolitiFact, Washington Bureau Chief, St. Petersburg Times
• Bill Allison, Editorial Director, Sunlight Foundation
• Bill Buzenberg, Executive Director, The Center for Public Integrity
• Aneesh Chopra, Assistant to the President, Chief Technology Officer and Associate Director for the Office of Science & Technology of the Executive, Office of the President
• James Hamilton, Charles S. Sydnor Professor of Public Policy; Professor of Political Science and Economics Director, DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
• Alisa Miller, President and Chief Executive Officer, Public Radio International
• Aron Pilhofer, Editor, Interactive News Technologies, The New York Times & Co-Founder, DocumentCloud
• Eric Umansky, Senior Editor, ProPublica, Co-Founder, DocumentCloud

2:30 pm  – Presentation- Knight Foundation Commission on The Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

• Reed Hundt, Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Company, Former Chairman, Federal Communications Commission

2:45 pm  – Panel – Engaging and Informing Consumers in the Internet Age

• Sandra Ball-Rokeach, Professor and Director of the Communication Technology and Community Program, Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism, University of Southern California
• James Gaines, Editor-in-Chief, FLYP Media & Former Editor, Time
• Jon Miller, Chief Digital Officer, News Corp.
• Debra Osofsky, National Director, News and Broadcast, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists
• Tom Rosenstiel, Director, Project for Excellence in Journalism, Pew Research Center
• Jason Seiken, Senior Vice President, PBS Interactive
• Linda Solomon, Photojournalist, Committee Member, Citizens to Save the Eccentric
• Kathy Times, President, National Association of Black Journalists

4:00 pm  – Presentation – Lisa George, Assistant Professor of Economics, Hunter College

4:15 pm – Panel – The New News

• Jim Brady, Allbritton Communications
• Christopher Callahan,  Dean, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication,  Arizona State University
• Elisa Camahort Page, Co-Founder and COO, BlogHer
• Bill Densmore, Vice President, Director, and Co-Founder, CircLabs Inc.
• Andrew Jay Schwartzman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Media Access Project
• John Servais, Founder,  NWCitizen.us

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News Corp Vs Google

An epic battle is brewing between Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and Google, as early as next month we could see News Corp controlled websites disappear from Google’s search results. It all started when Google began to index News Corp websites such as the Wall Street Journal / Fox news and returns to the minute results in Google News Search.

There has been a lot of commentary and discussion between the News Corp supporters and Google supporters, the case has been made by News Corp that Google is stealing content from their websites and basically not paying them for it,  Google has not provided an effective business model for these websites to benefit from having their content on Google News.

What has baffled a lot of people is, why doesn’t News Corp simply block access to its websites from Google? Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineland describes in this great post.

Any webmaster worth a decent salary should know how to implement robot.txt and rel=noindex, I can not believe a large corporation like News Corp can’t just set this up. The reason? because News Corp doesn’t want to loose out on the massive free traffic from Google!

The problem lies in the failure of News Corp not been able to monetize the traffic effectively, and this problem has been a thorn in Mr Murdoch’s pocket for a long time, perhaps now its really starting to hurt? It’s now at a boiling point, and we will see some major development in this area very soon and actually I do think it would be a very interesting case study for the future if News Corp does decide to block Google, it may end up been the golden bullet to solve their problems!

Personally I don’t understand what the big fuss is about, but that could be due to my lack of interest in News Corp, sure I watch Simpsons and Family Guy, but I can’t recall the last time I needed to visit Wall street journal, Fox News or any of News Corps digital news websites.

However I do see the bigger argument here, and one News Corp is using to leverage its case; without enough money to support professional journalists it could spell the end of professional / investigative journalism. What do you think? Here are some recent video’s that talk about this topic, so grab yourself a coffee, sit back and make up your own mind.

( read more for the videos and a copy of Marissa Mayer’s Testimony regarding Google and its commitment to create economic opportunities for publishers.) Sphinn this post

Update: The FTC will be hosting a “Journalism & Internet Age” Workshop on December 1st & 2nd, which will be streamed live from http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/index.shtml , the workshop will feature Mr Rupert Murdoch, Google and Yahoo representatives and Danny Sullivan on the panel. Full program here.

Alan Murray of The Wall Street Journal on charging for content from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

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These questions will have to wait, for the time being lets see what has happened;

The announcement made yesterday on ‘Google Commerce Search‘ I believe is going to have an immediate impact on SEO’s and web developers,  some questions that come to mind;

• From what I read correctly, GCS will be a hosted platform.
• Does this mean domains need to redirect to a GCS portal?
• Or is this something which can be embedded into a webpage via JS?
• Perhaps its just a simple database connector to Google for product retrieval?
• If its the JS method, how is the website going to be crawled ? Since googlebot doesn’t read JS content that well.
• Will Google commerce search enabled websites carry more weight in SEO?
• How much customization can be done?
• Will developers have access to the source code?
• How will Google deliver this product via a SAAS method and still keep the site search engine friendly?
• And finally will we see a new ‘Google certified commerce developer’ certification?

Keep your eye on this space, as we will attempt to answer these questions for our readers in the coming days. For now I am sure you are busy hitting the links above for some research of your own!

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FTC announces guidelines for disclosures

What has got every internet marketer up in arms this week? If you have not heard, the FTC ( Federal Trade Commission, USA ) has released its final guidelines for advertisements using endorsements and testimonials.

In its press release on the FTC blog, the commission released two PDFS titled;

Guides Concerning the Use of : Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising – PDF

Revised Endorsement and Testimonial Guides – PDF

A combined behemoth of 94 pages, most of which is filled with legal jargon ( Hint – skip to the end of the first PDF and the second PDF, it has some easier to read scenarios and examples of what the FTC classifies as an endorsement etc ) .

While this author has not attempted to completely analysis the guidelines, which is a task too daunting at 3:31am, I have managed to find some great resources for our readers, that should help explain and clarify the report and its impacts.

Update: There is a great interview by Jim Edwards of igottatellyou.com with Mr. Rich Cleland, Assistant Deputy at The Federal Trade Commission that really clearifies a great deal of misconceptions of the new FTC guidelines. Thank you to @smbusinesscoach for the twitter update.

There is little doubt these new guidelines will impact most internet marketeers, but to what extent is still anyone’s guess and I am sure we will see some heated debates on the world wide web regarding this in the coming weeks.

It is my very early opinion that these guideline will become a standard practice such as privacy statements and terms & conditions of use. I also foresee the FTC will soon release a consumers guide or a layman’s guide to their guidelines which should help clear things up even more.

Some early reactions from internet marketers include ;

Imagine if government employees had to provide disclosure?  Can you see the laws with an *next to them *this law was paid for by the following lobbyists….

The following congressman went on long vacations compliments of the following companies…

If you have ever doubted the power Google holds today, look no further than this new law, this is exactly what Google wanted. No longer are paid posts against the Google webmaster guidelines, it is now against the law in the United States of America.

The interesting part about this is, that as long as your website is hosted outside of the US this law does not apply to you, and is unenforceable (I assume). Therefore one would think the indexing and ranking of websites that clearly are breaking this law could fall on the search engines displaying this content?

This is quite a massive move in the wrong direction by our government; one would think that our policy makers had better things to do with their time. How is possible that the US government is going to police this? How can they confirm that a disclosure is indeed required? Maybe lots of people like to blog about lots of various topics with lots of out going text links?

Since this would only apply to US based websites, I guess Google is going to place additional value on US hosted domains out going text links? Is Google going to devalue links from all other countries?

John Wieber -  SEOMoves.org

The team at Li’l Engine will post updates as they come in hand regarding the new FTC guidelines, for now I do think it is still too early to tell, but we hope the following resources will help you get a better grip on things.

• The Offical FTC Press Release
• Google Affiliate Blog Network
• Matt Cutts Blog – Some good comments
• Trademark Blog – Michael Gray & Ted Murphy on FTC Blog Regulations ( with recorded voice conference audio )
• PMA Blog – FTC Advertising Guidelines – Analysis ( PDF )
• disclosurepolicy.org – online disclosure policy generator

Have your own take on the new FTC guidelines? Please share them in the comments with our readers.

Share this post http://bit.ly/4oR5c9 | Sphinn this post

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1. First been the search partnership of Bing ( Microsoft ) and Yahoo! ( more )

2. Secondly Google has announced a major update to its search infrastructure code named #caffeine

We are going to explore what caffeine is all about and the major differences in part 1 of this 2 part post. In part 2 we will be dealing with some direct data comparisons and delivering our own conclusions based on this data.

[ don't forget add our RSS or Twitter to get notified when part 2 is released ]

On August 10th, the Google Webmasterblog announced public testing of their new #caffeine search quoting :

For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

The caffeine update is been reported as a complete rewrite of Google’s search infrastructure – lets check out what this means;

• Changes in how Google stores the massive amount of data gathered by their robots.
  This is a direct response to the rise in new digital media such as streaming videos, blog posts, social media content ( Twitter, facebook ). The old Google infrastructure was built to handle data by way of Collection > Quality Ranking  > Sandbox > Indexing. However with the explosion of real-time content, search engines are faced with the daunting task of filtering all this content to provide a real-time search. With any major change in a new data model, software must be upgraded / rewritten, this is part of the Google Caffeine update.
• Changes in how the Google collects its data.
  While this has not been confirmed, it is safe to assume with any updates in how data is written and stored, changes to the data collection process will also be different. Google uses robots that crawl through the web for data ( googlebot ), this is traditionally data that may not change or update in real-time. The caffeine update must include changes to the robot to cater for real-time content. My theory currently is Google has developed several types of robots that differ in its indexing rate and craw rate to cater for different media content.
• Changes in the how data is served to end users.
  So, Google is fairly tight lipped at the moment when asked if the #caffeine update will effect end-users. Quoting from their Google webmasterblog:

The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results

• From what we have tested on the #caffeine sandbox this is not really the case, some major differences we and other users have reported include:
  • Massive differences in the total search results returned. We are talking a few million results wiped out from results in general.
  • Search query time is generally faster. ( however take into account no Adwords are been displayed, which would increase load time )
    
  • Major SERP ( search engine result position ) changes. Which leads me to the next important point.

Have the search results changed in Google Caffeine? ( Changes in the Google algorithm / ranking system )

Yes most definitely, although Google is stating otherwise ( for now ). When we first heard about #Google #Caffeine I posted this question to Matt Cutts from Google.

john chen August 10, 2009 at 7:47 pm

Hi Matt,

Been sussing this out all morning, from the Google blog and your post its seems there are algo changes / updates on the current sandbox. I’ve noticed some definate changes in the how the SERP is different in the sandbox in my play this morning.

Could you confirm this?

Matts response was:

john chen and Daniel Sterling, most of the changes are in things like our core indexing, so there’s less changes for things like rankings. Lots of users won’t notice a big difference

From our own research and you can verify this yourself in the #caffeine sandbox, this is simply not the case! There are major differences in Caffeine SERP that will ultimately effect users, SEO and most of all companies that depend on their search positions.

Some changes we have identified in Caffeine SERP

• Google Sitelinks disappearing from some results.
• Rich Snippets disappearing from some results.
• Caffeine has difficulties handling 301′s. ( This is a bug )
• Page 1 results mostly contain the same sites, however positioning is quiet different
• Page 3 and onwards seem generate completely different results.
• The index page on root domain now has more weight.
• Pages with heavy keyword stuffing are been penalised.
• Pagerank Sculpting is no longer effective. ( further confirming the rel=nofollow topic )
• Brand name / Domain trust further effecting SERP. ( a step further in the Google Vince Update? )
• Number of inbound links from external domains
  
• External links using targeted keywords as anchors carry more weight.

These changes come from our initial research in comparing a sample data of searches, and by no means represent a concrete conclusion. Google caffeine is still under development, as such the algorithm and infrastructure will change and alter in the near future. These are just preliminary conclusions for your consideration ( food for thought ) and therefor I recommend that you make no immediate changes to your SEO strategies, but simply keep the above in mind.

How have your websites performed in Google Caffiene?

Google has released #caffeine for general public testing here

If you are after a direct comparison tool between #caffeine and current #google search Try http://www.goobinghoo.com/

Goobinghoo - side by side SERP comparison

You can easily compare the search results side by side, but don’t forget to sign out of your Google account. ( otherwise you may see your own preferred results )

Part 2 of this Google Caffeine update post will expand further into our findings above and with real data + example comparisons, as well as some SEO tips that you can perform today.

Did you find this post informative? Have anything further to add? Please leave a response in the comments section.

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