Top 10 Google Products you might not know about

A lot of people who aren’t interested in search engine optimisation might not realise the quantity of products that Google offers outside search.  Google spend a lot of time developing new and innovative features to strengthen their hold on the search engine market and advertising, that generates the majority of their revenues.  They also build and own many products outside what would typically be thought of as’ search’, and some of their most notable products include YouTube and Android as well as Gmail.  In this SEO blog I’ll cover some of those products you might not have heard of, and discuss a little about what they can be used for.  In no discernible order…here they are:

1.    Google Code

Google Code is their site for developer tools, APIs and technical resources.  On ‘Code’ there are application programming interfaces (API) available for Google Maps, YouTube and a number of other Google Apps.  This site also features several developer products and tools that have been built specifically for software developers.  These include the Google App Engine, a hosting service for web apps and the Google Web Toolkit, which allows developers to use the Java programming language to build Ajax applications.  This particular Google product is obviously aimed at people with a technical or programming background that use Google on a regular basis.

2.    Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a platform that allows users to browse scholarly literature that has been uploaded to the web.  The ‘Scholar’ concept was first trialled in 2004, but the service received an upgrade in 2006 when Microsoft released ‘Windows Live Academic Search’, which could have been a potential rival.  Journals or articles in ‘Scholar’ can be found in a number of formats, with the most popular being PDF, and while some can be downloaded free, the majority have to be paid for after a free sample.  Google Scholar is most likely to be used by students, academics, or researchers looking for academic texts relating to a specific topic.

3.    Google Translate

Google Translate is a free machine translation service offered by Google, which translates a section of text, a website or a document into another language.  The user can choose between 63 different languages, including Welsh, Afrikaans, Basque, Yiddish, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Persian and Polish.  Google announced earlier in the year that they are to close down the free version of the service due to the financial burden caused by people abusing it, however, it is to be replaced with a paid service.  This product had numerous users, including website owners who might want to publish their content in the native language of geo-specific domains, or just casual users who need a phrase translated.  Google’s decision to shut down the free service has been widely criticised.

4.    Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp is a 3D modelling program designed to be used by architectural and structural engineers, game makers, filmmakers and other related professions.  The software, which has been designed for ease of use can be downloaded in two versions; one free and one paid for.  The free version is marketed as being intuitive and fun to use, allowing users to re-imagine living spaces and model buildings for Google Earth.  The paid version, called SketchUp Pro offers the same features as well as the ability to exchange files with other software, the creation of compelling design documents, and the option to generate reports and PDFs.

5.    Google Trends

I have spoken about Google Trends in the past and how it can be of benefit for both SEO and internet marketing campaigns.  As Google puts it, Google Trends allows you to compare the world’s interest in your favourite topics.  Essentially, it allows you to enter five different topics, and Google will provide the corresponding search volume data for each of those queries, allowing you to look for trends in the data.  It can be used by SEOs to identify patterns in user behaviour, specifically seasonal behaviour, and what keywords an audience use at a specific time of year.

6.    Google Talk

Google Talk is a downloadable chat application.  There are two ways that users can operate Talk.  One is through a video and voice plug-in, which allows chat within Google Mail, iGoogle and Orkut, and the other is a downloadable software application which allows you to host ‘MSN’ style chats from your dashboard.

7.    Google Earth

Google Earth is an application that lets you go anywhere in the world and view satellite imagery, terrain, 3D buildings and numerous other features that make this product a fantastic play-thing as a well as a potentially useful tool for professionals.  Google Earth can be operated from the user’s desktop, in Google Maps and also on mobile devices, and there is the option to save information about the places you visit and share that with friends.

8.    Picasa

Picasa is a product Google acquired, which helps users organize, edit and share their photos – it’s almost like having a digital photo album for free.  The name is a blend of Picasso, the famous artist, and the Spanish word ‘casa’, which means house and this quite delicately sums up what the product represents.  This is another user product that doesn’t necessarily have a definitive or strict user base, but it’s intuitive and user-friendly design has been almost universally praised by critics.

9.    Google Product Search

Google Product Search is a hybrid of two former Google products called ‘Google Products’ and ‘Froogle’.  It is a price comparison service where users enter the desired product into the search box, and Google returns results about numerous products relating to the search query, and price listings for a select number of vendors.  Unlike many other price comparison websites, Google doesn’t receive money for listing vendors, nor can those vendors pay to have their items listed at the top of a Google product search.

10.    Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a service that lets you have emails sent to you when Google finds new results related to a search term that you have entered.  The Alerts the user asks Google to send can be as broad or as defined as the user dictates because you can choose specific result types to get alerts for as well as how often you receive them.  Google Alerts could be used if the user is following a particular news story – perhaps they are waiting for the verdict of a court trial.  They could ask Google to alert them as soon as a result is found relating to the trial verdict ensuring they get the information almost as soon as it released.
So, those are my top 10 Google products you might now have heard of.  If you don’t agree with my list, or would just like to contribute your own suggestions then please feel free to comment and someone from SEO Consult will get back in touch with you.

read more

Google personalises your search results even further with “Search Plus Your World”

Google recently announced another feature they have included in searches they dub “Search Plus Your World”, whose rollout began today. It’s a new idea that brings public and private search results together into one mixed set, giving a diverse set of results tailored only to you. Not everyone will see the change yet as it is still rolling out, and is currently only for those searching in English and are signed in to Google.com.
One of the first concerns of this new feature is privacy. Private content may be shown in the results which may make it appear as public, even though it isn’t and this may inadvertently share more than was intended. I would personally argue that anything private should never be put on the internet, but other less knowledgeable users may not be under the same pretence.

So what can we expect from this?

First off there is a new view called “Personal Results” which displays only your personalised results based on social connections and behaviour. This includes shared posts and content from your Google+ account. In the search results you need to select the personalised results button, shown below, to get these personalised results. If you don’t have the button yet, don’t worry, Google are rolling it out over the coming days. If you want to try and get it early you can try following the instructions here, as I did on http://goo.gl/R1cVy and then (and this is important as it only works this way) visit Google.com (not .co.uk, etc) making sure you’re signed in and are viewing in English.
As an example, I performed a search for “SEO”. Next to the buttons, you can see that Google has found 10 personal matches, and 1 billion regular search matches for the search term.

Some of the personalised results are blended into the SERPs as shown below.

 What personalised content will we actually see?

Google says you’ll see content from yourself, and “content that is shared with you by suggested connections that have Google+ profiles.  If you have Google+, your personal results can also include content that has been shared with you by people in your circles”.
In summary, personalised results will include:
Regular organic listings
Listings boosted by your personal behaviour
Listings boosted by social connections
Public Google+ content, including photos
Private Google+ content that has been shared with you
The final personalisation is a very big change and may cause concerns for some searchers, but I’ll go into this a little later.
I wanted to see what personalised items I could bring up for myself, so I shared an article about Crystal LED Displays to just a small group of people in one of my circles. I then searched for “Crystal LED Display”. Because I made this private, it shows up as “Limited” in the post yet it still shows up in the SERPs when I search for it. This could cause concern for someone who has posted something private and they think its public. This is made clear by the use of “Limited” and “Public” next to the post in the SERPs.

There are many ways this kind of search can be useful. If you post something on your Google+ account but later can’t find it, you can conduct a search and it will appear in the SERPs, allowing you to be reunited with said content. Google wouldn’t have found these items previously in a regular search, but providing this directly in Google.com opens a new era in social search.

If you want to see just personalised results, you can do this by clicking the link shown in red below. Clicking “See all results” brings back the regular mixed search.


Searching for people

You’ll no doubt be aware of Facebook search. When you type in something to search for, it includes apps, pages, people and more. Google have now integrated a similar looking system for searching for people within Google search.
Below I’ve searched for “Matt”. Now I could have been talking about anyone called Matt but I only have one Matt on my Google+ profile, and that is Matt Cutts.

Selecting the result for Matt Cutts, the results now change to be personalised completely around him. This includes his Google+ posts, his personal website and other sites he has been mentioned on. However you’ll only see public content, or private content shared with you. You won’t see anything you’re not supposed to.

Back to privacy

Going back to concerns over privacy, some may be reluctant to share anything on Google+ anymore because of the new ability to search for it. It doesn’t bother me personally as I’m aware that Google will not show this content to others, but for other people who are not familiar with how it works, they may get concerned.
Personalised results are personalised only to you, they’re never made public. The content is only shown to you unless shared with other people, in which case they may also see it in their personalised search too. My only concern is if someone then takes that content and makes it public on their Google+ account. This will then begin showing up in public searches as well and that deeply concerns me. However, as with all things on the internet, if it’s private it’s best not to post it anywhere on the web otherwise there is always that fear it will get loose.

It could get you into some serious trouble


I sit here asking myself what other problems open content and these searches may lead to. Consider this: You accidentally post something that is slightly out of context and it is made public. Little mistakes keep being made and this leads up to something bigger. One day someone gets overly concerned and conducts a search on these things and your name keeps popping up. That has the potential to get you into serious trouble especially if it’s based around your place of work or family.
Another example is something you posted, but forgot and want to continue having forgotten. One day someone searches and this pops up and they decide to share it. It gets brought back to life and suddenly you’re aware of it again.
These things may sound small but they can amount to a whole lot of trouble.

So despite some concerns, this new way of searching is a good thing?

Definitely! It can change the way we search for content we really want to look at. This is something Google has wanted to perfect for a long time and this is one extra way to get us there. Weeding out irrelevant content is also good for us because it saves time. There’s nothing worse than searching for something and not getting the right information quickly. I’ve frequently found myself searching dozens of SERPs just trying to find what I need. Now, if someone I know has posted content on the same subject, I’ll be able to find it and that content is likely to be more relevant than a generic search.
It will take some time for us all to see the benefits, but after a week or two using the personalised search I can see it having a big impact on the content we look at.

read more

Is ‘Search Plus Your World’ anti-competitive?

I know what you’re thinking, not another ‘Search Plus Your World‘ article!  It’s true that that the blogosphere has become over saturated with commentators analysing the update from every angle you could possible think of.  Is it a positive move?  Is it anti-competitive? Is it an attempt to get Facebook investigated for privacy violations? Is it damaging SEO? Is it improving SEO? Should more brands adopt Google Plus profile pages?  Somewhere, all these topics and more will have been covered, but I’d like to go into more detail about the anti-competitive allegations that have been thrust at Google.

There are two main points that these allegations focus on; the Google+ profiles listed in the Google search drop downs, and the additional Google+ People and Pages that are suggested when certain terms are searched for (see the images below).

The top image above shows how Google+ profiles are appearing directly in Google’s drop down suggestions.  This happens for celebrities, friends and bloggers with a profile on Google+ when their name is entered in the search bar.  In the example above, which was highlighted in the Google blog post announcing SPYW, we can see that Trey Ratcliff’s Google+ profile is suggested to me despite him not being a pre-existing connection.  The problem, as many have pointed out, is that if Google+ is listed, why aren’t Facebook and Twitter?  They are, after all, more established social networks, and there’s a good chance that they contain more information about the person being searched for than a G+ profile.  Google are all about providing quality to its users, so surely if a search is conducted with obvious social intent, then Facebook and Twitter profiles should be suggested with as much visibility as a G+ profile.  Trey Ratcliff, the person in the example from the image, does have a Facebook and a Twitter account, so is it not anti-competitive of Google to promote their own social network as a suggestion in the drop down without suggesting Facebook and Twitter?

In search, Google have developed their market share naturally overtime through consistently providing the best user experience, and the most relevant and reliable search results.  For this reason, they can often shrug off the allegations of anti-competitive behaviour aimed at them by those who might feel their domination of the search engine market place is damaging user experience.  More significant problems arise when they begin using that position of superiority to start leveraging products that are peripheral to search; Google+ is one of these products.  Because of the way Google+ received advertising directly on Google’s homepage, and the way it is now being integrated into the SERPs, there is a good case that the search giant is unfairly favouring Google content over non-Google content.  This seems to be reinforced by the ‘People and Pages on Google+’ suggestions.

The same allegations have been made about the ‘People and Pages on Google+’ suggestions.  If we look at the image above, we can see the people and pages that are suggested when a search for ‘music’ is conducted.  Imagine if you are a brand or do social media marketing for a brand, and you see these profile pages listed for searches.  Naturally, you will see this as an opportunity and immediately begin focusing on optimising your Google+ business page to get your brand listed there for relevant searches.  This might also mean that you take some of the focus from your Facebook and Twitter marketing campaigns, and potentially, this could be hugely damaging to the business models of them both because they might lose the investment or support from key advertisers.  Why aren’t the Facebook or Twitter profiles of Britney Spears or Snoop Dogg also suggested, because potentially they will have more value for me as a searcher.  There are other ways these suggestions impact searcher experience, for example, if I conduct a search for ‘Facebook’, it will be suggested that I add Mark Zuckerberg to my connections on Google+:

The thing is, Mark Zuckerberg has never shared any content on Google Plus, nor does his profile have any information about him, or about Facebook.  In what way is Mark Zuckerberg’s empty profile relevant to me, as a searcher, looking for information about Facebook, and why is it given such a prominent position in the SERPs?  Surely it would offer a much better user experience if his Facebook account was listed there instead, because this provides lots of valuable information.

From my experience then, these criticisms of ‘Search Plus Your World’ being anti-competitive are justified, but perhaps the more noteworthy observation is that, on occasion, my experience as a searcher is negatively impacted by this update.  The Zuckerberg instance above being a prime example.  Before you tell me that personalised search can be turned off at the click of the button, I’d like to point out that these suggestions remain even when personalised search is disabled.  That means someone with no Google affiliation, with no prior Google search history, or even someone with cookies disabled, will have Mark Zuckerberg’s empty G+ profile suggested to them when they search for ‘Facebook’.  This seems like Google are blatantly promoting their own content, or products while sacrificing user experience.

Do Google have a counter-argument?

Of course they do! This is Google, after all.  In an interview with Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan after his appearance at CES 2012, Eric Schmidt discussed some of the allegations being put forth.

In case you haven’t got time to watch the video, Google’s argument is, essentially, that Facebook and Twitter haven’t given them the permission they need to crawl and display that kind of profile information.  However, they would be happy to ‘sit down and have a conversation’ with the companies in an attempt to reach some kind of agreement.  This has been disputed by the search engine optimisation community because of the fact that Facebook and Twitter profiles can appear in the organic SERPs, and therefore there should be no reason why they can’t be given the same prevalence as G+ profiles in the SERPs.  However, I wouldn’t want to comment on this too much as their might be a genuine legal reason why other social networking profiles aren’t appearing with the Google+ profiles.

Already there are blogs cropping up with titles like “Why Every Marketer Needs a Google+ Strategy“, “Why Google+ is an Inevitable Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy” and hundreds of other blogs along the same lines.  Do you think words like ‘inevitable’ and ‘need’ could have been applied to Google+ before the Search Plus Your World update, or are other SEOs just threatened by Google’s bold strategy?  I’d really like to hear your thoughts on the matter, so please feel free to comment.

read more

Can SEO still be effective without Social Media Marketing?

The start of a New Year marks a time when significant voices within an industry begin making their predictions for the next twelve months within said industry.  This is very much the case in search engine optimisation, and numerous ideas and theories have already been put forward about what 2012 holds in store for SEO.  One suggestion that really jumped out at me came from Rand Fishkin at seoMoz, who said, “SEO without social media will become a relic of the past“.  I’m a big fan of social media marketing, and while I don’t necessarily believe SEO without social media marketing will become extinct, I strongly believe that in the right context, social media can increase the efficiency of an SEO campaign tenfold.  I hope to use this blog to explain why I think this is the case.

How can Social Media benefit Search Engine Optimisation?

Social media marketing allows businesses to embellish their other online marketing efforts by engaging directly with potential customers, and influencing significant commentators that themselves have a lot of outreach with potential customers.  Traditionally, the success of an internet marketing campaign is judged by achieving a higher ranking in the search engines, and whether this is the correct way to judge success is up for debate.  While social media marketing is becoming an increasingly powerful metric for determining ranking within the SERPs, its true value lies in being able to target and bring in relevant traffic direct from the social networks, and building brand reputation.  The most obvious way to target this traffic is by looking for something called ‘social mentions’ or ‘direct mentions’.

The best examples of these are through Twitter.  By using the search bar located at the top of every Twitter profile, businesses can search for their brand name to find examples of which people are talking about them, what they are saying and looking for ways to engage with those people, if appropriate.  It might be the case that someone has mentioned the brand name on Twitter to express unhappiness at a quality of service or product.  This provides just as good an opportunity for a business to engage with a person as if they had said something positive.  You can try and remedy the situation by finding out what went wrong, and if necessary offering some form of compensation.

Other, less direct, social mentions come about when Twitter users Tweet something that includes an industry related keyword.  Let’s say you are in charge of a catering company – you might search Twitter for ‘catering company’ or ‘caterers’.  This will provide you with a list of Tweets that include those words, and in this is the opportunity to market your services.  You might find someone who has recently tweeted something like ‘Panicking about sorting a catering company for my wedding!’ or ‘My son’s birthday is in two weeks…I better sort a caterer…’.  Both these examples provide the opportunity for our imaginary catering opportunity to engage in some inbound marketing, but how they go about conducting that marketing is more important than finding it in the first place.
There might be a temptation, if our catering company was a bit lazy, to auto-reply to all mentions of certain keywords with a bland stock Tweet such as ‘It sounds like you need catering!  Come check out our website @ www.example.com’.  This is likely to be flagged as spam, because it really isn’t offering anything of value besides letting people know that your business exists in the first place.  A much more effective strategy (although this takes more resources) is to respond to each Tweet individually with a personalised and insightful message.  I would also say that it’s not necessary to directly market your services when you begin engaging with someone, just communicate with them and find out more about their problem before you dive in with the big sales pitch.  That’s the great thing about using social media channels to conduct marketing, it gives you a context that is absent in cold calling and some other forms of offline marketing.  Perhaps the person who needs a catering company for their wedding lives in London, and you might offer discounted prices for weddings being conducted in the London area.  All these things come about through talking to these potential clients before you try to sell them your service.
Outside of Twitter, other opportunities to look for social mentions can be found at Google+.  G+ is becoming a more recognised platform for bloggers, and using the search feature you can find out which bloggers are discussing catering, or wedding planning, or party planning.  These are likely to be influential, and you can begin engaging with them in an attempt to get mentioned in their blogs, or on their website.  For some companies, this might be a better way to increase online visibility than through an increased rank on the search engines.
The above examples I’ve mentioned are just a couple of examples about how social media is influencing search engine optimisation.  While I don’t think that traditional SEO, absent of social media marketing, will become entirely defunct – adopters of this new inbound marketing technique are much more likely to have an advantage when it comes to increasing the online visibility of their business.
SEO Consult have a dedicated social media marketing department, so if you have any further questions then please feel free to contact us or leave a comment on the blog.

read more