viernes, 28 de mayo de 2010

6 new articles





 

"Search Engine Journal" - 6 new articles

  1. Google Officially Acquires AdMob
  2. Understanding Semantic Search and SEO
  3. The 7 Deadly Sins of Google Local Listings
  4. Change Your Default Twitter Following Email Notifications
  5. Brand Security Issues With Geo-Listings
  6. Open Discussion : Favorite Social Media Monitoring Tool?
  7. More Recent Articles

Google Officially Acquires AdMob

Following the clearance given by the FCC, Google has finally sealed its acquisition deal of mobile advertising company – AdMob. The Official Google Blog just announced the closing of the deal. And it's official – AdMob is now part of Google. And Google's mobile search advertising strategy has just gotten a big boost.

Google is now preparing the smooth transition of Admob to Google's platform as well as studying on how AdMob's mobile ad serving technology would fit into Google's own mobile search advertising program.  As early as now, Google is giving hint at how AdMob would interplay with Google's overall mobile search ad strategy.

Clearly, AdMob would be situated in Google's mobile search advertising program, similar to the way Google serves ads on its content partners' websites. It will also play a great role in Google's mobile display ads and text ads strategy for web optimized mobile websites and mobile apps including on the iPhone and Android platforms.

Google believes that mobile advertising will play a significant role in every single marketing campaign. And Google wants to be ahead of  the game and has began its quest to conquer the mobile ad space with the AdMob's acquisition.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Officially Acquires AdMob



Understanding Semantic Search and SEO

A framework for semantic analytic centric content

Regardless of what I've said about the whole 'LSI' and Google crap in the past, one things worth bearing in mind is that all modern search engines do semantic analysis to one extent or another. It may be phrase based, using PLSA, HTTM or a hybrid. That part is really inconsequential. That is important is that we can take heart in the fact that content that is semantically flexible will do a better job of targeting the page in question.

Understanding semantic search and SEO

First off, some common concepts worth looking at; semantic search is NOT semantic web. This is one area that seems to get convoluted all too often. We're not talking about tagging. We're talking about the probabilistic/statistical approach to understanding concepts/meanings of a web page/document.

The next thing to try and get away from is that it is only synonyms that play a role within these concepts.

Building out concepts

All too often I see people talking about stemming and synonyms. That's only partially true. We also want to work on using terms that build out the theme/concept which we might call 'supporting terms'. That means we can consider;

  • Automobiles
  • Cars
  • Autos
  • Vehicle
  • Auto
  • Car

Do not be limited to delivering only those signals. We want to go further into creating a deeper theme for that space including supporting terms such as;

  • Engine
  • Garage
  • Tires
  • Hood
  • Spark plug
  • Keys
  • High Performance

And phrases related to or containing them.

As we can see, those aren't synonyms but supporting words or phrases that further establish the semantic concepts on the page. But we'd likely be more specific in our targeting with additional elements such as;

  • Reviews
  • Sales
  • Rental
  • Insurance
  • Prices
  • Specifications

We can look at transactional and informational modifiers as well. This helps define the type of page that we have. And the type of queries we are targeting. Or for another example some possible terms for; 'space shuttle'

  • space
  • shuttle
  • mission
  • astronauts
  • launch
  • station
  • crew
  • nasa
  • satellite
  • earth

Getting the picture here?

What we're looking to do is create a strong semantic theme of what the page is about through the words we're using to frame it. If one searches for 'Jaguar' they have a few options to choose from,

  • A Car
  • An Animal
  • Football team (US)
  • Computer Application

By using semantic themes you will enable the search engine to better understand the concepts on your page. Remember, search engines have about a 6th grade reading/understanding level. We need to play nice with them.

Building out cocepts around keywords

Elements search engines may look at

The interesting part about using semantic signals/approaches in search is they can give a wealth of information by analysis of such elements as;

  • TITLE of page
  • Content of page (phrase ratios)
  • Prominence factors (Headings, italics, lists)
  • Anchor of inbound links
  • TITLE and content of pages linking in
  • Spam detection
  • Duplicate content detection
  • Personalization

Each of these can be weighted/dampened to give an over-all page relevance score which can then be send to the rest of the processing system. This scoring is based from the current seed set of documents in the system which has a learning mechanism to continually refine the algorithms.

Ranking the pages

Of course the obvious question remains; how are these signals used? In the more common implementations out there machine learning is the call of the day. The search engine would start with a seed set of documents that satisfy a given term/phrase ratio, similarity measure and compare other documents to those for future scoring. Then, using various signals such as query and click data, they can further refine the seed set on the fly.

This would ultimately be combined with other relevance scoring mechanisms and core rankings set to whatever threshold they deem to deliver the end results. While this may not be enough to garner great rankings on their own, they are likely useful to those playing grab and hold via the QDF (query deserves freshness). Any non-link velocity related signal would be at a premium in such cases.

 

Putting it to use

The first thing we want to do is expand on our keyword research to provide not only primary and secondary targets, but also get into semantic support terms and even semantic baskets. This will be endlessly useful for content development, site audits, link building and more. Given the many signals that can be had, having these concepts integrated into the entire SEO program can be invaluable.

When you do this at the beginning (during the KW research) it can be easily fed into every other aspect of the SEO program.

There really are no tools nor can I imagine one that would work, (although I did talk to the WordStream gang about it recently). But it still is an art more than a science. You see we don't know the relevance scoring for the seed set and the SERPs are inclusive of other ranking factors. I have found it an interesting excercise to measure occurances on pages ranking top 10, with the least amount of link juice/authority. While not perfect, it oftens brings concept rich pages.

Getting into the mindset

As with many things in this thing of ours, it is something you need to get a feel for in the query space in question. What is important is getting into the habit of watching how you're framing the content. Build around the core term with not only modifiers (geo-local, informational, transactional, plurals) but also with related terms that expand on the concepts.

Now, before I leave you, I dug up a ton of tools, post and even seminars to get you into the groove. Get a feel for how search engineers think and you will find getting actionable ideas all the more efficient.. I hope you got something from all this, it is an area not often discussed enough.. Enjoy!

/end adventure

 

Tools to play with

  • Aaron's tool has some interesting 'Phrase Match' data, but it is marginally effective for this excercise and would need sorting.
  • KW Map is interesting, but also is marginally effective and has no export option to speak of. Close, but no cigar
  • Vseo Tool – Also not the greatest, but certainly presents some reasonable semantic concepts and can be exported.
  • WordStream – also comes close, (I am helping develop a tool tho) but nothing default to really group deeper semantic relations for our purposes. Emails the list to you for sorting purposes.
  • Nichebot – these guys almost have it with the poorly named 'LSI' tool. This produces probably some of the best lists for our purposes. Fully exportable for sorting.

 

Googly Tools

  • Keyword Tool – about as use(less?) as the others. It has some insights, but not deep enough for this excercise. Although it is easier to sort and does support downloads
  • Search-based Keyword Tool – not as good as the above KW tool in the testing I did recently for this. It does support exporting though.
  • Google Sets – this one isn't obvious right away, but handy. If you look at the 'description' element, you can start to see some supporting terms that might come in handy (since Googly is recommending them). Problem is that it doesn't give results for granular/obscure terms.(also try Google Squared)

 

Semantic relations

  • Onelook reverse dictionary – returns the list of related terms, each word linked to its definition (more tricks from Ann here) – does a reasonable job but doesn't have export function.
  • Reference.com reverse dictionary – clusters related terms into groups by their meaning and gives the actual definition for each cluster: barely usable.
  • Rhyme Zone – define your term and find rhymes, synonyms and antonyms. Using the 'Find related terms' option you can get some pretty usable lists, unfortunately they are not exportable.

 

Good Geeky Reading

Posts

Google Patents

 

Microsoft Patents

Videos for Geeks

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Understanding Semantic Search and SEO




The 7 Deadly Sins of Google Local Listings

It really doesn't matter if you consider yourself a sinner or a saint for you to benefit from some lessons I have had to learn the hard way.  You see, in my daily work I live in this universe where Google is the "Supreme Being".  There are Google commandments and I have to make the choice to either do some shortcut-marketing, or play by their rules.

In my "teenage internet marketing years" when I was first playing around with local listings, I experimented with many things that might not exactly be 100% down the whitehat trail of happiness. Now, I am much older, much wiser, much worse looking, and I have been able to determine a few practices that might be tempting for some, but to me they are 7 deadly sins that will ultimately lead down a path of destruction for your local listing.

1. Stuffing Your Business Title With Keywords

This is by far the most common type of sin found on Google Places listings. A company with the business name of "company x" will claim their listing and then put the business name as "company x + location and category".

Picture 2.png

I understand that for the short term, locations and keywords can actually help rankings. For some reason the "Supreme Being" of local listings feels that keywords in your business name should have an effect on overall map rankings and coming from a company named Google instead of Search Engine I do find that ironic. Still, they state in their Places Pages Guidelines,.. "Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords or a description of your business into the business name." So, you are left with a conflicting option. Some would say "Hey, if it helps, then I will stuff that title like a turkey on Thanksgiving." But here is a look at how Google is moving to penalize listings that do this…

Picture 3.png

If you were to visit a non-claimed places page and click on the edit this listing link, you would be taken to a page where you can make a few changes to the listing. On the right hand side you would see the box pictured above. As Professor Maps pointed out recently if you click on the edit history link then you can see the changes made by users, and most importantly what Google "thinks" about these changes.

On looking through a few I found a very interesting note that can be flagged on a listing. In dealing with business names you will see the phrase "Name is longer than average". So, if a group of businesses stuff keywords, then most likely they will be tagged with the same comment, and it would become a very easy task to penalize companies with long titles that are location and category focused.

2. Putting Location Keywords in your Categories

On a places page, you are given 5 categories for your local business. To maximize the targeting of these categories, people would put the city location that they were targeting. For instance, if you were a plumber in Chicago, your category would be "Chicago Plumber" instead of just "plumber".

Picture 4.png

This used to be the jewel of how to get higher rankings, authoritative one boxes, market dominance, and sneaky satisfaction of knowing that you outwitted the competition. But, one sad day as I was checking rankings of a few listings I noticed a substantial drop. Upon investigation I found that locations in categories was the culprit. Upon removing location keywords my rankings were back to normal within a day.

This was something discussed by Carter Maslan from Google in a very informative discussion on categories a few moons ago.

3. Using a P.O. Box For Your Business Address

Many companies might not want to use their physical location in Google maps for a number of various reasons. They might run from a house, or their operations might not be in the area that they actually serve. So, for years companies have used P.O. Boxes for a local presence. The problem with using a box is that Google ranks businesses based on an ability to prove your geo-location and area of service. A P.O. Box is not a geo-location. It is not something that appears as a pin-point on a map. It is at a post office which might or might not be recognizable by the mapping system.

The Google guidelines are quite clear on the issue…"Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist. PO Boxes do not count as physical locations."

4. Using a call tracking number

This is quite possibly the most annoying issue in local search currently. As pointed out through the rest of this post, Google is very strict in regards to a company's business name, address, and also the phone number. These are the 3 things that the local bots search the web for to gather business data. So, if you have discrepancies around the web regarding your name, address and phone number, then you end up shooting yourself in the foot for rankings. This is why call tracking numbers don't work.  It is a separate number which will confuse the system and will lead to listing issues.  Call tracking is an area that I see needs improvements in local search in order to improve the ability to track conversions, and even though many local search companies offer call tracking options…they should not be used on a Google local listing.

5. Faking Reviews

Reviews help rankings. This is an undisputable thought amongst the local search crowd. And if anything affects rankings, then people will game it. So, how can Google crack down on reviews?

  1. Account age and history- not only does Google flag listings with long titles, but they also mark individual Google accounts with phrases like… "User has entered risky data in the past." Or "User has made few edits".
  2. User Report- The people that are most likely to read your reviews are yourself, and your competition. If your competition even has the smallest idea that you have put fake reviews in your name, staff member names, or fake names, then they will turn you in like a winning lotto ticket. This can be done right on your places page under "Flag as inappropriate".
  3. Star Ratings- Google can also see that if one listing has all 5 star reviews and the accounts that are leaving reviews don't have any history, then it is most like fake reviews. If you receive a large sum of reviews in short period of time, that might flag your listing as well.

The key with reviews is to make them real, Google has not yet came down on review spamming with full force, but when they come…sinners beware.

6. Hiding Your Address

Recently, places pages came out with the ability to show service locations, and also hide your address for home based businesses or businesses where customers don't come to your shop.  I do think this will be a good feature in the future, but at launch time I ran some tests that resulted in an immediate drop in local rankings.

Picture-28.png

It has been reported by some that they didn't see any significant drops. I tested it on 3 different type of businesses in different areas and saw drops in every listing. So, be careful and try it both ways. The drop was immediate and upon disabling the "Do not show my address" option my listings returned instantly.

7. Stuffing your description with duplicate information

This is the newest area of concern to add to the list. I used to write business descriptions with very focused keywords that I was trying to rank for with some good results. I always included categories, and location information as it described the business quite well. The last update to the Google Places Guidelines has this to say…

"Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business's title, address or category fields."

I have not seen dramatic drop in rankings from this, but Google is fairly good about keeping to their guidelines and penalizing things that they find that are not in line. So, this is an area to watch and play it safe. It should be used to explain your long tail keyword information that could be of benefit, or explain a wider area of service then your categories.

Conclusion

People look at sin in different ways. Some say there is no such thing and we should party like it's 1999, some live their life trying not to break the commands of their belief system. Well, in this case…Google is God whether you want them to be or not, and short term sinning against them might bring joy and good rankings, but long term it will only bring banishment and having to re list with annoying phone verifications.

My advice is to play it safe. You can still outrank anyone who doesn't (with a good understanding of local search ranking factors) and most importantly, the ranking lasts for the long term. Ultimately, the choice is yours in how you deal with the 7 deadly's.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Google Local Listings



Change Your Default Twitter Following Email Notifications

By default (but optionally) Twitter sends you an email "notice" of each user who starts following you. Unlike Facebook, for example (where you have a separate page listing all your new contacts for you to be able to befriend any of them), those email alerts are the only way for you to timely find out about a recent connection on Twitter.

This is why I have this email alert enabled: once someone new follows me, I want to know instantly. However the default email notifications are quite limited. All you are able to tell from the default email alert is the following information:

  • The number of followers;
  • The number of people who the user follows;
  • The number of tweets.

Twitter default email alert

While this info does tell you something about the potential friend, these numbers have never been the most important factors that would make me follow back. I want to see the bio, website, most recent Tweets, etc – this way I will only click through to follow back (otherwise, just ignore the notice) – this saves time immensely!

So let me share a couple of tools to make the most of those default Twitter notices.

1. TwiMailer

I've been using TwiMailer for a year now and I have never felt like switching back to default Twitter notices. It is quite easy to install and creates a "bridge" between your Twitter profile and your email box. Just get yourself registered, grab your unique TwiMailer email ID, go to your Twitter account settings and provide it there:

TwiMailer set-up

From now on, each new follower email alert will contain lots of useful information:

  • The new follower's basic info: number of followers and people he follows;
  • The new follower's account info: profile photo, name. location and bio;
  • The followers's most recent Tweets.

TwiMailer alert

This info is more than enough for you to decide if you feel like following back!

2. Alerts Grader

Your following back tactics are up to you. I for one follow back anyone with the similar interests (regardless of actual "Twitter Power"). Many people prefer to follow back only established users. This tool is for those people. It grades Twitter users based on a number of criteria and alerts you ONLY on most powerful followers. The grade is claimed to be calculated based on:

  • Number of followers;
  • Power of followers (calculated from the same algorithm);
  • Number of updates:
  • Update recency: "Users that are more current (i.e. time elapsed since last tweet is low) generally get higher grades."
  • Follower/Following Ratio:
  • Engagement (how much the user is retweeted and cited)

*You can try the grading system here*

You can set the minimum grade of the user to be alerted of via settings. You can also disable instant notifications and only receive daily digest of new followers:

Twitter email alerts settings

You can also access the list of your recent followers online (the list is sortable by time, grade, and tag):

Alerts Grader web interface

Do you use any tools to get timely notified of new Twitter friends? Please share them in the comments!

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Change Your Default Twitter Following Email Notifications



Brand Security Issues With Geo-Listings

Local business listing hijacking is a real situation that can and will have an impact upon a business brand name.  If the business is reliant on the local consumer for revenue, local business listings have evolved into a good local marketing tool.  In order to tap into this business marketing tool you have to claim, update and manage your local listing at multiple local listing websites.

Local business listings are in five major categories of websites.  They include search engines, social communities, 411 websites, GPS websites and business directories.  They have existed for a number of years and the primary data source starts with the phone companies.

Security with local listing websites leaves much to be desired at a variety of levels.  Examples include post cards that are easily identified with pin codes; creating new accounts easily without verification; duplicate listings causing security confusion and the list goes on.  Considering these security problems exist with tier 1 websites, you can only imagine how easily someone can fraudulently impersonate another business with tier 2 websites.  Tier 2 websites that later feed into the Internet system incorrectly.

The importance of protecting your brand stems from local consumers performing a significant volume of searches for businesses, products and services in their local area.  They look up local information through web searches and through mobile searches.  As they look up this information, they get to see pictures, videos, consumer reviews about your business, products or services.  If this information is not appealing to the local consumer they will avoid your business.

If your geo-listings are hijacked, the listing can be used against you by having wrong information entered or it can be used to drive business away from you.  Thus you run into the problem that local consumers will begin to have an impression about your business based on what they find online.  This includes having too many negative reviews being placed into your geo-listings by competitors or the hijackers.  Reviews that consumers use and will use to make a decision to come to your place of business or not.

If you are a business and believe that you will passively wait for "the system" to fix the problems, then I think you are going to be waiting a longer time than you would like.  The best example we have for brand security concerns lies with Twitter-jacking that had been going on before celebrities went to court.  Brand name protection and brand security are a very real problem with local listing websites.  These websites that are not prepared to adequately provide the security necessary to avoid fraudulent criminal behavior by your competitors or from another country.  Local listing websites by the very nature of their service do not have security as a primary capability.

Are the local listing websites working on security?  Yes, I would say that based on news coverage and other writings, this area is being addressed, however, still not at a level that can avoid hijackings.  Business directory websites certainly are not showing any level of security to "get listed".  These directories are much too easy to be hijacked with an existing listing or a new account.

Passively waiting for appropriate levels of security is not going to help with brand name protection and brand security.  The answer to this problem is to claim, update and manage your business local listing at multiple local listing websites as soon as possible.  You will be able to use this as a positive business marketing tool to the local consumers in web searches and mobile searches.  You will also be able to manage your reviews, engage in new technologies like QR Codes and evolve with this business marketing tool over the next three years.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Brand Security Issues With Geo-Listings



Open Discussion : Favorite Social Media Monitoring Tool?

The Search & Social team is currently comparing various social media monitoring tools like Radian6, Trackur, Visible Technologies, Reinvigorate and several others.

We're also looking into the nuances between tracking and monitoring :

* Social buzz mentions
* Incoming links via Facebook, Twitter and microblogging
* Social media & influence mapping amongst the blogosphere
* User sentiment : positive vs. negative mentions

Do you use or recommend a social media monitoring tool not on this list? If so, please feel free to mention it in the comments below with a little bit of details on why you like it and how it has helped your business.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Open Discussion : Favorite Social Media Monitoring Tool?



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