Brooks Digital Marketing » Google

Google Goggles – Great Work Geeks but How About My Privacy?

Jason — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:21:32 +0000

Yet another mind blowing application from Google’s international super geek team. This time the two friendly engineers show us how they have somehow managed to create a search that is powered by photographs taken from your phone.

It is easy to see how photos with text can be searched as text recognition software has been around for some time however the ability to recognise and return results related to just plain old pictures is quite baffling to me.

So the question now is, what is this useful for? The obvious examples are presented in the video and include recognising artwork and grabbing data from business cards but how does this impact privacy?

Let’s assume that to return results Google has to have a similar picture to reference and we expect that all the photography that has been going on for the maps application will be the source for searches on building or urban areas in general.

So how about people searches? If you are active on social media there’s a good chance you have added one or two photographs of yourself that are tagged or have Alt text in the HTML. Google can search it’s index, match your image and return your name, employer and whatever public data you have to anyone that takes a photo of you.

If you ask me the implications of that sort of power are pretty scary.

Posted via web from Brooks Digital Marketing

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Google Launches Real-Time Search

Jason — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:16:53 +0000

via mashable.com

I’m not sure about this. Google is putting a window of live results on it’s SERPs. The thing is the results scroll through pretty fast for broad keyword searches so the quality and relevance of the results depends on at what point you perform a search – you could miss some juicy links easily by turning up at the wrong point.

I’ve personally got alerts set up in Tweet deck that cover Facebook and Linked in status updates and also a Netvibes page with a ton of feeds on it too so I suppose this new feature will only get a glance when I do my searches just in case I might see something handy pop up.

I do think this could get much more interesting when you perform a narrower search on a long tail keyword. The results are not going to be pouring through like they are on the Tiger Woods demo on Trends and the results could be quite interesting, especially for monitoring brands.

For internet marketers this means that getting your listing in the latest news window is going to be like a game of musical chairs with people posting an update, checking to see if it has appeared and then posting again if someone has displaced them. I just wonder how Google will deal with this type of real time spamming which is inevitable?

Posted via web from Brooks Digital Marketing

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BBC News – Google to limit free news access

Jason — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:31:33 +0000

via news.bbc.co.uk

This is a very interesting development and raises a ton of questions. The first thing that comes to mind as an SEO practitioner is that newspapers do very well in the search engine results pages. This is clearly due to the massive authority they have because of the mountains of unique content they produce and the number of other sites linking to them (among other factors).

If newspapers are going to restrict free access to their news then I’d expect that Google would severely restrict their access to page one listings for keywords that are relevant to any newspaper articles that have to be paid for. Most users expect free news and there is plenty of it around, so if Google clutters up page one with subscriptions pages any search engine that bucks this approach will pinch their share.

The truth is that if I have paid for a subscription I’d have my RSS feed reader pull in the news or have a bookmark on my toolbar, so if I was actually searching for news I’d want to be served up free options not subscription pages.

If Google does penalize news sites for offering up subscription pages (which it should as a subscription page isn’t relevant to a keyword search for ‘Lancashire hot cakes murder trial’), then this could open the field for smaller free news services to get some extra traffic.

It seems to me that the news providers are getting around this potential for a penalty by allowing visitors to view the first few articles free, but for any heavy news searcher it won’t be long before their search results are bunged up with subscription pages.

I understand that print media has taken a big hit but they have enough money and resources to come up with creative advertising related models. Trying to stem the flow of news will just open the field for smaller web sites and word of mouth reporting via social media, which if you think about it could be better than some of the garbage that comes out of the major press!

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5 Search Engine Optimisation Tips to Attract Google Love

Jason — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:33:00 +0000

Today, we’re going to discuss what the search engines like, but specifically we’ll talk about Google since this player as you will already know totally dominates the search engine market place and getting search engine optimisation right with Google will set you on the right path for success with other search engines.

An important thing to realise before we get started is that search engine optimisation and digital marketing is essential to the success of your business online.

There’s no point having a swanky website with all the bells and whistles if Google can’t see you.

It’s just like just like having a fancy high street shop with a boarded up front and in this economic climates that is virtually commercial suicide as you will be missing out on potentially huge amounts of lost revenue.

In this post we are going to quickly discover what Google does and what it really looks for when indexing websites.

And the reason we need to do this is that just like any other game, knowing what the rules are before we start is going to help us play the game properly and get you the best results.

Ok, so lets take a look at what Google actually takes into consideration when ranking websites, but be aware, I’m not listing these factors in any particular order of importance because we can only make informed guesses!

Google closely guards the way it compiles its results because it is in a constant war with those that continually try to manipulate the results and other search engines. If we all knew the exact formula then Google wouldn’t be able to rank sites properly and the results would be pretty useless to users.

All we can do as ethical digital marketers is use the search engine optimisation techniques available to us and continually monitor our results and refine our campaigns to get better listings for you – this process isn’t easy and of course it takes time and money but after all digital marketing isn’t a paint by numbers exercise!

So what does Google do all day (and night)?

Google constantly spiders the Internet gathering information from websites so that it can rank them accordingly.

What we need to understand is what information it collects and where it collects it from.

With this understanding we can set up our website to be ready with the correct information when Google shows up.

Right so lets’ talk about the factors that we know that Google loves

1. Unique and Fresh content

If Google can see that your content is frequently updated it’s going to make sure that its spiders visit you regularly and that it indexes your new content. One of the ways you can see if Google rates a site as an authority in a particular niche is by looking at page rank (you’ll need the google toolbar to see this).

Google is the most respected search engine and provides up to the minute access to the latest information the world has to offer so to keeps its top spot it absolutely can’t afford to miss out on new content.

By feeding it unique, high quality regularly updated content you are making big friends with Google.

Secondly

2. Google likes sites that large numbers of people or other sites like

Google gauges this by counting link popularity. If you got to Yahoo site explorer and type in a web address you will see the number inbound links that site has.

These links, how they are formatted and where they come from play a major part in getting a good listing.

Thirdly

3. Relevancy for keywords.

Google also likes sites that it can easily determine what the website is about and therefore rank it more easily.

The key here is that Google loves it when you are specific about what you do so if you communicate the exact theme of your site to Google at every chance you’ll start becoming friends with Google.

By showing to Google at every opportunity that your site is about a particular subject you are telling Google that you are worthy of indexing for that particular subject.

Of course we’ll be talking much more about how to do this properly in subsequent posts.

Another factor is…

4. Authority and status.

Sites like Amazon will always be on top of the search engines, so the idea is that you become the authority in your niche. Authority is something that is gained over time by applying the techniques that we’re going to talk about in this blog over time.

Finally

5. Age is also another factor that Google takes into consideration however this factor can be circum-navigated if everything else about your website is set up correctly.

Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you in the next post

For more information on Search Engine Optimisation for the Derby area call Brooks Digital Marketing.

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