Google Caffeine

The speed, accuracy and relevancy of Google search results are only getting better.

On the 8th June 2010, Google announced one of their largest ever search algorithm updates.

Built to make search more up-to-date, Caffeine will index new content within minutes of it being published with Google to “provide search results that are 50% fresher than their previous algorithm.

Google’s new indexing system called Caffeine will produce real-time search results that previously only covered breaking news articles, and will now include information from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Google have commented on their blog: “Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

Some background for those of you who don’t build search engines for a living like us: when you search Google, you’re not searching the live web. Instead you’re searching Google’s index of the web which, like the list in the back of a book, helps you pinpoint exactly the information you need. (Here’s a good explanation of how it all works.)”

What impact will it have on a business? The considerations will both be:

1. Some businesses search engine rankings within Google may increase or vanish.Historically, large Google updates have seen some sites significantly affected both positively and negatively through the algorithmic updates. While for some the position change is marginal, other more significant movements have seen websites entirely vanish from view. However as always, Google’s focus is around keeping its search engines results fresh, accurate and up-to-date and so these regular updates are crucial in Google maintaining its position as a market leader in the search engine industry.
2. Real-time search resultsWebsites that have previously sat at the top of Google’s organic results will now find that their sites move down to make way for real-time results. While real-time results may only show temporarily, for sites that are currently getting top spot through a fixed could find a dramatic drop in website traffic even over a temporary drop. A company who has no social media strategy, (or not a strong one) will need to rethink their approach to web marketing to keep the Google as a viable source of traffic.
3. Real-time inclusion of social media updates within organic results may also see more widespread usage of social media platforms as it increases reach to search engine users. A study found 51% Facebook users and 67% Twitter followers were more likely to buy the brands they liked and followed on these sites. Social media gives a face to a brand and by engaging customers in sharing content that demonstrates their expertise, will help divert quality traffic to their website and hopefully into conversions.

If your company’s website has been affected by the recent changes, you may want to talk to your SEO expert to find out what can be done to help improve your site rankings and make it more robust for the future.

Falling newspaper advertising demand and lower circulations as readers move online are some of the reasons that have prompted Rupert Murdoch’s attempt at reshaping the market for online news. The plans are to introduce his new subscription model in June before the World Cup where readers of the websites The Times and The Sunday Times will be charged for access.

Murdoch recently announced charges to use its online content. Readers will be charged:

• £1 for a day’s access – the same price as the weekday newspaper
• £2 for a week’s subscription to the two sites
• International visitors are charged $2/€1.50 a day or $4/€3 a week

While print subscribers to these newspapers will receive free web access, paying for online newspaper content in the past has been targeted to more specialist newspapers such as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. So if free content is readily available on other news websites and blogs, will people be willing to pay for this?

David Grunwald, media consultant at Deloitte, said the key to paywall success would depend on the uniqueness of the content. “If a publisher has content that is readily elsewhere available, then readers will migrate away,” he said. “But if a publisher can offer niche or premium content such as brand-name columnists, top restaurant critics – it may well be that more people will be encouraged to subscribe.”

The internet has opened up many new methods of information distribution where countless sites are free to use. If Murdoch’s news content isn’t unique and can be found on sites at no cost, time will tell whether this paywall will succeed or not.

We would like to welcome Liz Lum to the team. Liz is an addition to the team and joining us as social media and SEO expert. Her background/degree is in marketing. With Social Media playing such an important part in website marketing strategies Liz will be a great addition to the team to further develop this area of the business. While her focus will mainly be on Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other areas of Social Media, Liz will also be working on other areas of web marketing such as SEO.

According to comScore, a leader in digital marketing intelligence, their recently released online video rankings metrics report found Google video property sites ranked first with 13.1 billion videos accounting for 43.2% of all videos viewed online. Hulu ranked quite far behind in second with 3.2% of all online videos viewed, followed by Microsoft sites ranked third with 2.1%, and Yahoo! sites at 1.2%.

With Google’s proposed introduction of Google TV, a combination of TV and the Internet, what impact will it have on the global entertainment industry? 

Google TV would open access to millions of video channels online, and with video-sharing communities growing rapidly such as YouTube who experiences 24 hours of new video uploaded every minute, viewers will no longer be confined to the current limitations of their set top box. TV shows and movie downloading are so prevalent, this may pose a dilemma for pay TV companies.   

It was also found that Tremor Media ranked as the top video ad network with a reach of 92.6 million viewers, making up 52.1% of the total video viewing audience. Amid corporations investing millions on 10 second ads, looking to more cost effective channels like online video may be a more viable and sustainable strategy in the future.

Technology is dynamic and how companies utilise the relevant channels will determine how well they continue to stay in the game.

Could this see the end of Pay TV, or will we see the Pay TV model evolve into something else?

For a long time now news sites have faced a large decline in sales due to the popularity of the internet, and the ease of finding out free news via various methods online. One of the models newspapers have looked at to improve their bottom line is a paid subscription model.

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch has just announced that in the next three to four weeks details of a new subscription model will be released which covers both news and other digital information. It will be interesting to see the future of this model. With so much news available for free on the internet, what will News Corp unveil that is worth paying for? But as we all know, Rupert Murdoch is incredibly successful through the savvy decisions he makes.

More on this news story on the Los Angeles Times website.