There has been another cool Google update with the redesign of Google’s image search results page.

Google found that Google Images search is getting more than 1 billion clicks per month. When Image Search launched in 2001, it indexed 250 million images. Today, it indexes just over 10 billion images!

A handy new tool is the “similar images” option, where you’re able to search for other related images if you’re not satisfied with the first set of results.

For advertisers, there has been the launch of a new ad format called Image Search Ads. These ads appear exclusively only in Google Images. So if you searched for Converse sneakers, store ads who sell the shoes will appear at the top of the images.

This presents another avenue and opportunity for companies to reach more customers through image search and not just in search engine results pages (SERP).

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.

Quite recently Google changed their Analytics code to provide better browser support, and to help address speed loading issues often caused by other scripts on the page. Previously the tracking code has been placed before the last </body> tag within a page, however often when a page doesn’t load properly, or is slow to load and a visitor has already navigated away from that page, tracking has not recorded that visitor information specific to that page.

On the Google Analytics code help centre, Google have provided instructions stating you should:

“Note: To ensure the most streamlined operation of the asynchronous snippet with respect to other scripts, we recommend you place other scripts in your site in one of these ways:

• before the tracking code snippet in the <head> section of your HTML
• after both the tracking code snippet and all page content (e.g. at the bottom of the HTML body)

If that isn’t an option, you can still put the asynchronous snippet at the bottom of the page. You can also split your snippet to retain some of the benefits of asynchronous tracking.”

The change is very welcome to help provide more accurate website statistics.

To find out more about these changes visit their help page at: Tracking Sites with the Asynchronous Snippet

Google recently announced their new Twitter timeline search feature. It is quite an exciting feature, as it helps to track hot topics being searched for, what was being discussed relating to those topics at specific times and so, provide better insight into user behaviour and interests.

Google’s initial release allows you to explore tweets going back to February 11, 2010, and soon you’ll be able to go back as far as the very first tweet on March 21, 2006.

To access this feature:

• Search off the topic of interest
• Click “Show options” on the Google search results page, then
• Select “Updates.”

The first page will show you the familiar latest and (what Google considers) best updates from a comprehensive set of sources, with the new timeline chart at the top. In that chart, you can select the year, month or day, or click any point to view the tweets from that specific time period.

So how will this benefit you? Where there is a hot topic in your industry, it gives you the opportunity to leverage off that topic, and apply it to your own business. This  will be extremely valuable if you have your own Blog, Twitter or Facebook account, and start discussing that topic. By doing so it gives you more opportunity of having one of your web marketing mediums picked up by a potential customer as they are searching off that topic.

Other ways this can be utilised is to change your Pay-Per-Click or Organic SEO campaign(s) to use these words. For example, if you are a dietician, and the hot topic is on a new diet fad sweeping Hollywood, you could use these topical keywords for your campaigns, and write your opinions on whether that diet is effective, or dangerous (if using Pay-Per-Click, don’t forget to make sure your Ad Campaign landing page is the page where you have discussed this topic). Not only are you more likely to have your website found this way, you are also building credibility, and have the opportunity to increase sales for your business or services.

The only thing I found when searching various hot topics is that these results are not very ‘localised’, and so if you are looking for topics that are within say Australia, or even your city, you may be disappointed. In the example screenshot below, I have search off ‘interest rates australia’ for April 2010, then narrowed down to the spike shown on the 6th April 2010. The top 10 results displayed did not include any Australian websites, only international ones.

In saying that, this is a newly released feature, and as Google is ever evolving, we may see localised results in the near future.

search: ‘interest rates australia’ for April 2010

search: ‘interest rates australia’ for 6th April 2010

Looking for the best results in building your business on the web? Call us today to find out how we can build your business.

The past two months have brought about some of the largest changes in a short space of time I have seen from Google. What do these changes mean to your site? Well, depending on the current level of SEO/Web Promotion being done on your site, it may mean very little. If you are on a lower budget, or not doing any SEO work at all, it could considerably impact on your business.

So here are some of the most important changes:

• Personalised search changes
• Google Local, and other Universal blended results
• Real time search
• Site speed
• Social Media/Networking

Personalised search changes

While Google Personalised search has been in place for quite some time now, previously this only worked when logged into a Google Account. On 4th December 2009, Google announced that they will be opening this up to everyone, whether you are signed into an account or not.

• http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html
• More on Local Business Search

Google Local, and other Universal blended results

In the past couple of years, Google blended the search listings from images, video, blogs, news etc… into a system called Universal Search. Which have been incorporated into the natural listings, pushing many sites off the first page. Now we have social media sites such as Twitter, and Facebook showing up in Google results, and is one of the reasons social media/networking optimisation has become an important piece of search.

Google local is the small map and related results you will very often see in Google results. More frequently you will notice that these results no longer appear just based on using a suburb within your search, and will appear in more general searches. What this really means is if you were doing well in the lower 5 results or so of Google, is that your site will now be much harder to see.

Real time search

Real time search is where information just added onto Twitter or Facebook, and other sites, will immediately appear within Google’s results. While we are seeing very little of this in Australian results as of yet, this will be a major change to come in 2010, and will potentially have a large impact on sites currently doing well at the top of the search engines.

Site Speed

Google are also now using site speed as a factor in rankings sites according to how quickly though load. This means sites that are very ‘image heavy’, and have a lot of video or Flash Animation, may find their rankings drop.

Social Media/Networking

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other Social Media/Networking have been around for a long time now, but with the changes to Google in terms of including listing these within their results, having a presence within Social sites such as these is becoming a very important part of your web marketing campaign. Not all Social Media sites are suitable for all businesses, so it is important to select the right solution to match your business.

As you will see, these are large changes that make web promotion more complex, and require changes in strategy to keep you driving effective traffic to your website.

If you’re looking to drive more business through your website, contact us today to help you determine the best web strategy for your business.