Consumer Corner : google

User Reviews Invade Google SERPs

Mike Phillips — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:41:00 GMT

It's no secret that online user reviews can be of great significance to businesses. But a recent search of some brick-and-mortar businesses reveals just how important these reviews can be - particularly in the eyes of Google. And anything important to Google is important to the online success of your company.

I recently experienced some car trouble. So, I had the car towed to a local dealership to get estimates. This morning I needed to call and get an update so, naturally, I turned to Google and typed in the name of the dealership to get the phone number - I knew that because Google knows my location, I would have the phone number displayed quickly. Below are the top three results on the search engine results page (SERP).

Notice the third result - a handy map, the telephone number I expected ... and a partial, scathing review. Uh oh. I also see there are 24 total reviews. What's more, the URL listed is Carr's Honda - not Yelp or any other user review site. Clicking through reveals this page:

This page - still a Google page - features four more negative reviews. And now I'm considering a new place to take my car. Another point of interest is the source of these reviews. InsiderPages, JudysBook, DealerRater and Edmunds. Most are relevant to the auto industry, thereby carrying weight with consumers. In both cases, notice the limited text included in the reviews. This is very important, as most users will forgo a click-through if they learn what they need to know right away. If you're soliciting reviews, writing reviews or attempting to respond to a review, make sure to get right to the point. There's no need - and no room - for a flowery introduction.

Next, I searched for a famous Chicago pizza restaurant, Giordano's. Here are the results:

These are the first three results after a section with a Google Map, list of locations and phone numbers. Here, we find reviews in the first two spots, and a link to more reviews in the third. It's interesting to see that Yelp is listed (expected) but right below that is a link from Flickr. Click through and you get a photograph, along with the user's comments, and below that, comments from other Flickr users.

Thought prominent user reviews were limited to Yelp? Think again. This is a clear indication that your business' reputation is on the line, online, everywhere. That's a good enough reason to conduct searches for reputation management purposes regularly, and across all portals where users are actively communicating. That means Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter and many other places. Also, be aware of your industry and its authority sources - such as the case with Carr's Honda and Edmunds and DealerRater.

Take Advantage of iGoogle's What's Popular Gadget

Mike Phillips — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:40:00 GMT

Google has recently introduced "What's Popular," a gadget for user iGoogle startup pages. The gadget will display popular items of interest in the form of links with titles and short descriptions from Google's index on users' iGoogle pages. Users can then vote up or down results to alter the results. On the surface, it's like Digg, but there are some important differences.

No login, username or special account is needed to vote, other than already being signed into your iGoogle account. Like Digg, you can submit URLs for inclusion in the gadget. Unlike Digg, you don't need to provide any other information other than the URL. You can submit anonymously. This eliminates the worry of being penalized for submitting your own content. If you decide to submit using your Google ID, you can edit the title and description of the submission. Also unlike Digg, there presently is no area for commentary or the capacity to make friends. On the surface, it could be argued that this gadget has the potential to be a much more democratic process than a site like Digg, where results are regularly manipulated by networks of "friends." That's assuming Google is keeping tabs on multiple submissions and votes from the same sources.

While Google is, of course, mum on the details of what makes a certain submission "popular," it's safe to assume there are a number of individual factors working as a whole. Google likely takes into account the number of links pointing to the submitted page, user votes (pops) on the gadget and number of times the URL has been submitted, among other factors. So, it would make sense that the more your URL is submitted and voted on, the better chance of landing in a good position on the gadget. As you might expect, submissions look to be filtered by recency and relevancy, such as "HOW TO: Track Swine Flu Online" being at the top of the results all day, as of this writing.

There are some bookmarking-type functions in the gadget, including "My pops" (those submissions you voted for), and "My adds" (your own submissions). Expand the gadget and you can filter results by Stories, Videos and Images, and choose between Date Added and Most Popular.

Early looks show that most of the submissions come from tech-focused websites, such as Mashable, Lifehacker, CNet and ReadWriteWeb, as well as major news sources like Time and The New York Times. However, there are some offbeat submissions such as one from ffffound.com in the second position (see image).

At any rate, this is a target for submitting your URL, like anything else Google. Reports from last year also show that personalization pages are gaining momentum with users, particularly iGoogle. Another interesting point to note is recent reports of iGoogle being responsible for 20 percent of Google homepage visits. You can expect this gadget to catch on with users. And, you can reasonably expect that Google will get more sophisticated with this tool as feedback starts rolling in from users. Click to add What's Popular to your iGoogle page.

Fastest Rising and Falling Consumer Searches

Mike Phillips — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:48:00 GMT

Compete.com has released a study of the Web's fastest rising and falling searches, revealing Twitter as the term Web consumers searched most in March. It marked a 130% growth from February 2009. The top 10 fastest rising terms were:

Twitter
American Idol
Dancing With the Stars
Twilight (a popular book series)
Dr. Seuss (Birthday is March 2)
Melissa Rycroft (Dancing With the Stars and Bachelor contestant)
NCAA Basketball
Adam Lambert (American Idol contestant)
Watchmen (movie and graphic novel)
Jon and Kate Plus 8 (popular home/reality show)

Looking at this list, it is clear that the biggest driver of consumer search is entertainment. Moving down the list are even more entertainment and sports-related search terms. Below are the 10 fastest dropping consumer search terms.

IRS
TurboTax
Acai Berry
www.IRS.gov
HGTV
Watch Movies
Jessica Simpson
TaxAct
Slumdog Millionaire
Abraham Lincoln

Clearly, declining search terms have plenty to do with seasonality, but entertainment terms make an impact on this list as well. One interesting note is that HGTV and Watch Movies appear pretty high on this list. Looking at Compete's traffic data, HGTV also suffered a 46% drop in traffic for March. For movies, you wonder if channels like Hulu and YouTube have branded so well that consumers are searching less and navigating directly to these sites. Terms like "free movies" and "free online movies" appear farther down the list. Or possibly the piracy industry is taking a hit. Of course, that's pure speculation.

Compete's search data includes the five largest search engines in Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live Search, Ask and AOL. This is only one analysis, but these are always good things to watch. It may affect your keyword bidding strategies, content development ideas or tagging practices.

Google Insight for Search Gadget

Mike Phillips — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:50:00 GMT

If you're an iGoogle user, there's a new gadget that could be of great value. Insights for Search displays the top rising searches in the last seven days. After adding the gadget you can edit the settings - by results type (rising or top searches), search type (Web, Image, News or Product), search term, location, category, time range and set the max number of results.

I find great value in customized start pages like iGoogle and this gives me one more reason to like them. It's an excellent way to get a snapshot of what users are searching in your industry by simply launching your browser. Click on one of the terms from your list and you get to a Google Insights page that displays more detailed results and the ability to dig deeper with resources like location-based heat maps, news headlines, more search data and segmentation abilities.

Below is a shot of the gadget. This unfiltered list shows the G20 Summit as the fastest rising search worldwide on Google over the past week, followed by the feared Conficker bug, which is followed immediately by McAfee - no small coincidence.

Using Twitter as Google SEO

Mike Phillips — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Twitter is gaining in popularity with users, marketers and with Google - another reason to start a Twitter account if you don't already have one. If you do use Twitter, search for your company name in Google and see what pops up. You might be surprised.

We searched "Website Magazine" and found our website in the first position and, somewhat surprisingly, our Twitter page in the third position. A search for "Chicago Tribune" turned up their Twitter page in the last position of the first page.

A search for "Chicago Public Golf" showed a Twitter account, @chipubgolf, on the second page, above the fold, out of more than 9 million results. This account is not associated with the Chicago Park District in any way, and the listing is above several prominent public golf courses and trusted websites that review public courses. It should also be noted that @chipubgolf has not updated their feed in about six weeks, and has under 500 followers. However, the link is to a status update - meaning it's likely that particular update was linked to or retweeted repeatedly. The website associated with that Twitter account shows up at the top of page two.

Another search for "Daily Career Tips" revealed the Twitter account @DailyCareerTips in the first position on Google. The account belongs to Susan D. Strayer, who gives career advice, and the listing was above her own website. A search for "Dallas Pro Sports" shows a Twitterholic and Friendfeed page, both at the bottom of page one, out of over 25 million results. Quite frankly, this is astounding.

These examples show that Twitter is being given serious weight in Google's search results. As such, it's more important than ever that your business has a presence. Not only is Twitter a good way to connect with consumers but, if nothing else, it pushes everything else (including your competition) further down the page. In addition, you can see that the name of your Twitter account has big implications - both the actual name and the associated name. Should you have a Twitter account named the same as a website, you stand to own three or four spots on a search results page. Squatting on Twitter names is already prolific, so make sure you get in there now and lay claim to your business or brand.

What's more, this could have big implications for local businesses. Say, for instance, you get a twitter account with the name of the industry and your location. You might then rank for that search term - like Chicago Public Golf.

To that end, we decided to run a little experiment. In honor of one of Chicago's delicacies, we created @ChicagoHotDog. We will be tweeting about appropriate content, using keywords and linking out to relevant websites - all without a website of our own. If you would like to participate in the experiment, follow @ChicagoHotDog on Twitter and we'll see if we get a Google ranking for the key phrase, "Chicago Hot Dog."

Google Shows Longer Descriptions in Results

Mike Phillips — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:25:00 GMT

According to Google's blog (if you haven't noticed) they are now showing longer snippets with search results, for longer queries. So, if a user's search term is longer than a few words, each result will show a longer description.

This is significant, as recent data shows that users are searching longer terms more than ever before - 10% more than last year.

Read about SEO for long queries.

It's now increasingly important that your snippets are descriptive enough to induce clicks from Web users. This means optimizing your meta tags for your pages and/or products and regularly checking search results to see how your descriptions are rendered in results. Your content management system (CMS) might also be helpful in writing strong descriptions.

Are Users Searching by Numbers or Letters?

Mike Phillips — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:57:00 GMT

Top 10 lists are a good way to get attention and traffic to a blog post. And the same can be said about top 5, 25 or top 50 lists. But could you be doing more to get search traffic on these lists?

Using Google Trends, a search for "top 10" and "top ten" yields expected results. "Top 10" is searched more, and shows up more in news mentions. So it makes sense to title your posts with the number rather than spelling out "ten." But when you do the same trends search for "top 5" and "top five," the results are different. It appears that "top 5" is searched more by users, but "top five" gets more results for news mentions. This is a question of style. The standard AP style dictates that numbers zero through nine are to be spelled out, and 10 and above to be written numerically. Therefore, it's no surprise that "top five" is found more in news results than "top 5." But if more users are searching "top 5" you could be better off putting the digit in your permalinks and tags, if not the title of your post. Now, Google is pretty savvy when indexing these differences in styles, so it may not make a huge impact here. But for other search engines (and vertical search, even bookmarking and social sites) this could make a significant difference.

Along this same thread, other usage differences could also come into play. For example, "7 Deadly Sins" vs. "Seven Deadly Sins," "eighth grade" vs. "8th grade," or even hyphenated terms vs. non-hyphenated terms.

Gmail Labs Rolls Out Gmail Offline

Mike Phillips — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:22:00 GMT

An experimental feature has been added to Gmail - offline access. Using Gears, you can now download a cache of your mail, for offline viewing. You can then also compose email and it is stored in your outbox until you are connected to the Internet again, at which time your messages are sent. Any other actions you take in Gmail will operate the same.

There is also a "flaky connection mode," which still uses your local cache as if you were disconnected, but synchronizes your mail with the server in the background - good when you don't have a strong connection. The offline version of Gmail should be available under your "Labs" tab. If not, it will appear shortly. Below is a video explaining Gmail offline.

Expand Your Searches Across Multiple Sites With One Click

Mike Phillips — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:32:00 GMT

Try This Search On is an extension installed through Greasemonkey that lets you search multiple sites for your search term with one click. You can search the likes of Google, Ask, MSN, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr ... the list goes on. It all sits very neatly at the bottom of your window (or you can choose to display the bar at top), so it's extremely unobtrusive, but delivers powerful results.

There's really no magic to it, but enter a term and start clicking to find results on other sites. It's that simple and it's fast. Click the "?" to customize Try This Search On, or the "x" to hide the bar.

Not only is this tool a valuable time-saver, but for Web professionals, this serves as a reminder to get your content and your brand spread across the Web. Customized search tools like this are becoming quite popular with users. That means you need to have a presence on sites like YouTube and Flickr, and multiple shopping sites. (Try This Search On supports Amazon, eBay, Yahoo Shopping and more.)

Hittery: Search Across Multiple Platforms on One Page

Mike Phillips — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:23:00 GMT

There are plenty of ways to search. And if you're looking for something in particular, you might need to access several search portals to find it. Hittery has a potential solution. This site lets you create a "personal search dashboard," comprised of several different ways to search many different websites. You can choose which engines you want on your dashboard, "custom" or "normal." Custom search is a Google custom search tailored to fit the category. For example, the Health custom search only searches through "75 trusted medical websites." Normal search consists of sites like Wikipedia, eBay, YouTube, Digg, Yellow Pages and more.

There are certainly some uses for this tool. Let's say you want to check the status of a competitor's website. You could search in Internet and Tech, Blogsearch (Technorati, Google, Twitter), Find People (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), Site Traffic Stats (Compete, Alexa, Google Trends), even Social Info (Delicious, Digg, Reddit.) It might also be useful to find where you rank for any search term on any given website. This could be a good way to find out where you need to spend some time optimizing.

The results of some light testing were positive. I found that if I close the browser, it keeps my information when I open it again, and that's important. One thing I do not like is that when using a custom search box, the results tend to be in the same window. That forces me to click the "back" button, whereas I would prefer to have a new window, so I can keep searching different sources. Also, there was one time when, after I clicked back, the page failed to reload. So, I would like to see that change. Using normal search tends to open a new window. Overall, I like the concept and I'll be using it from time to time to broad-search topics and do some research. Below is a view of my personal search dashboard. You will also see a drop-down menu available for many search sources.

Mobile Search Skyrockets With Users: What You Need to Know

Mike Phillips — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:45:00 GMT

According to Comscore, mobile search is taking off in a big way with consumers. Compared to 2007, mobile search has increased 68% in the US. No doubt, the influx of smart phones and 3G network penetration has helped. And there are no surprises when it comes to mobile search portals. Google owns a 63% market share, with Yahoo getting 34%. But just because the search market share is consistent, that doesn't mean the search experience is the same. As a webiste owner, you need to make sure you're getting your piece of the mobile search pie, and it starts with mobile keywords.

Mobile search keywords and results can differ from a desktop experience. So, you should make sure your website content and blog posts are reflecting a mobile searcher's queries. One of the easiest and best ways to do this is by conducting some mobile searches of your own related to your business or industry.

Check out regular Google search results for your term, then try the desktop version of Google Mobile Search. Both feature search suggestions as you type, but the suggestions will differ between the two portals. You'll find some differences and similarities. The image below is of a Google desktop search starting with "roof."

Now, the mobile search starting with "roof." Notice the difference in suggestions.

Yahoo's mobile search portal includes OneSearch and again, there are some differences in results. There are a couple of key elements to look at with Yahoo's mobile results. First, you will notice that sponsored results are very limited. Second, results are decidedly local in nature. And third, you'll find that "websites" are listed before "mobile websites." The "websites" listings are taken directly from Yahoo desktop search results, while "mobile websites" are not. It's also interesting to note that in a search for "roofing", the result "mobile websites" lists stories, not necessarily more businesses. This may differ in your specific industry. Also, take a look at "related searches" in both the mobile versions of Google and Yahoo for some mobile keyword ideas.

Remember that mobile users will search using far fewer keywords than their desktop counterparts. It's much easier to type a long query on a keyboard than a mobile device. That changes somewhat with high-end phones like the iPhone and G1.

Finally, there's a sure-fire way to get results for mobile keywords. Consider running a Google AdWords for mobile campaign, using a separate ad group. This is from the Google AdWords help section: If you first made a mobile format ad in your ad group, the keyword tool, when accessed through your ad group, will show results for mobile searches.

In other words, when you run a mobile-specific campaign, you will get all mobile keywords when using the keyword tool for that group.

Firefox Add-On of the Day: Cloudlet

Mike Phillips — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:10:00 GMT

There's a new Firefox add-on that provides a very Web-2.0 savvy way to search. Cloudlet adds tag clouds to your search results through Google and Yahoo. Enter a search term, and above the organic results you'll see a tag cloud, listed alphabetically. If you click one of the tags, it is added to your search query and the results are more refined. At the top left, you can narrow a search by clicking "Sites," which will show you different websites pertaining to your search. You can also click the "Off" button to turn remove the cloud from your search results.

This is a pretty interesting tool, fun and quite handy. It's not a bad way to narrow searches when you're not quite sure what you're looking for. And it can be fun to discover new sites and sources not previously known. But what I find truly useful is the cloud as keyword and website research. For example, you might use this tool to find out what's hot in your industry, and authoritative sites on subjects. It might be a good way to find other sites that you want to target for links. Or, if you're getting ready to write a blog post on a topic, you could find some keywords to include in your title or post, or research the topic before writing.

The image below is from a Google search for Chicago Cubs. You'll notice obvious keywords like "baseball,"and "mlb." But other tags include "jerseys" and "gathright," who is a new outfielder signed by the Cubs this winter. So, you might consider a blog post about "Gathright Chicago Cubs Jerseys." And included in that post could be a link to Cubs jerseys from your Amazon Associates account.

Google Zeitgeist: What Consumer Search Behavior Can Tell Us

Mike Phillips — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:43:00 GMT

Every year, Google releases Zeitgeist, their roundup of user search behavior from January through November - data culled from billions of searches. Of course, you're bound to see terms like "sarah palin" and "obama," but dig a little deeper and you can find some opportunities. And just because 2008 is coming to a close, that doesn't mean users are going to stop searching these terms. But to keep up-to-date on any of the terms discussed below, check out Google Trends.

The headliner of 2008 Zeitgeist is "layaway," directly reflecting the economic climate. Take a look at the chart to the right - 2007 is in blue, 2008 is in red. It's not hard to see that consumers are interested in deferred payments. As such, you should make sure you have some of those options available. Check out eLayaway.com. Of course, "financial crisis," "depression," "bailout" and "mortgage crisis" were all popular search terms this year.

Fastest Rising Searches (U.S.)

There are some interesting results here, and a few key takeaways. Take a look at the list to the left. Obama is a given, but Facebook, coming in at #2 should get your attention. This is where consumers are and they will continue to flock. The latest data from Compete.com shows that Facebook is trending to see more than 50 million unique visitors by the end of the year. Looking at data from Quantcast, 62% of site visits are from "addicts," 34% are from "regulars" and a miniscule 4% are from "passers-by." That means a whopping 96% of visitors to Facebook spend considerable time on the site - your brand needs to be there. Positions 3 and 4 should tell you that mobile is emerging as a dominant platform. And if there's one thing that's hot on mobile, it's apps. Consider publishing an app for your brand, but don't limit just to iPhone. Google's Android will start to make serious headway this coming year, thanks to the Open Handset Alliance.

Trendsetters

"Solar panel," "hybrid car" and "cfl" (compact flourescent lamp/lights) were all popular search terms in 2008, due to the green movement picking up steam. But have a look at the DIY list to the left. There are plenty of categories here that touch a variety of industries. "DIY wedding" comes in at #1 and could entail everything from paper invitations to flowers and video equipment. Plenty of opportunity for an opportunistic Web professional. Perhaps the farthest-reaching category is #6, "diy home." You can only imagine the possibilities with this one. So, depending on your industry, consider writing, optimizing, and marketing some blog posts that relate with some of these popular DIY searches. Better yet, make a DIY video and put it on YouTube - #5 on the Fastest Rising Searches.

There are many more categories from Zeitgeist that may have an impact on your business and inspire you to branch out. Even if you don't find something is an exact match for your business, think outside the box. There may be some connections that are not immediately apparent, or even some affiliate opportunities.

Happy Holidays

This falls under the "just because" category. It's the holidays and we should all be thinking about what we can do as individuals and organizations to help make the world a better place - for our friends, families, neighbors, children, colleagues and even people you may never know or see in your entire life, across all borders. I find positions 3, 4 and 5 on the list to the right - fastest rising searches through Google Translate - both fascinating and refreshing. Have a safe and pleasant remainder of the year and best wishes heading into 2009.

Mobile Advertising En Masse Begins, Thanks to Google

Mike Phillips — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:52:00 GMT

The mobile online advertising revolution has begun. Google announced they are displaying AdWords text and image ads on results pages through their mobile portal. The ads will appear on iPhones, G1s and other mobile devices with full HTML browsing capabilities.

Advertisers will now have the option to include their regular AdWords ads in mobile results, without the need to reformat anything. The ads do have character limits, however. Conveniently, the mobile ads also come with separate performance reporting.

For advertisers, this means that you can now run ads targeted specifically at the mobile consumer. That's good news. But if you want to create a specific, mobile call-to-action you must ensure your pages render properly through a mobile device. That can be a bit more challenging. However, in your account you can make sure all ads point to a desktop landing page.

That brings up another interesting note. As an AdWords advertiser, you are automatically enrolled to display your ads on iPhones, G1s and other devices. Some may want to opt out of this - the mobile space (and the mobile surfer) might not be the best avenue for your advertising spend. You will need to change the setting in your account to opt out.

In the grand scheme of things, everything points to a mobile advertising revolution - forcing advertisers and businesses to think beyond the desktop, ready or not.

Vlingo Voice App Comes to iPhone

Mike Phillips — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:14:00 GMT

Google recently launched voice-enabled search, but they're hardly the only players in the game and certainly not pioneers. One of the companies making headway is Vlingo, who recently released a free voice-enabled app for the iPhone that lets users make calls, search the Internet (Yahoo and Google), search maps and update Facebook and Twitter profiles. The app can be found at the App Store.

In late October, Vlingo also announced upgraded features for their voice application for BlackBerry. Using the newer models, users can update Facebook and Twitter, speak text messages, call a phone number, and open any number of BlackBerry applications (address book, browser, calendar, etc.) Check out Vlingo's website for some demonstration videos.