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.

To keep up with Google Buzz, users with Yahoo! and Facebook accounts can now link their two accounts to share updates and messages across both platforms. Users will be able to see their Facebook newsfeeds on Yahoo! pages and share content from Yahoo! straight to Facebook.

“As the place that 600 million people visit every month, Yahoo! is in a unique position to bring together different social experiences from across the Web to a single place”, this post can be read on the official Yahoo! Yodel Anecdotal blog. Thus incorporating email with social media platforms makes sense as social media is about real-time and by linking these accounts it has made communicating and receiving information a whole lot more efficient.

This was a strategic move to encourage people to spend more time at Yahoo! website’s, resulting in more opportunities the company can use to make money through their advertising model. In Feb 2010, Hitwise found Australian searches from Google accounted for 87.26% (using Google.com.au and Google.com).

However, will this strategy really enough to significantly take away any significant market share from Google and their continuous market dominance?

Recently there has been a large backlash from Facebook users due to privacy concerns. Privacy is often a great concern for people using the web, and especially social networking sites. Not being able to easily control what information is kept private turns a lot of people off.

IT security firm, Sophos recently surveyed 1,588 facebook users and found that 60% of users were considered quitting facebook as a result of these issues. The results of this survey were:

• 12% – I don’t think it’s likely
• 12% – No
• 16% – I already have
• 30% – Highly likely that I will
• 30% – Possibly

More information can be found on the Sophos blog.

In relation to the privacy concerns raised by many, facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has also announced that “We really messed this one up” and “we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I’d like to try to correct those errors now.”

Hopefully very soon we will see a simplified method of users being able to control their privacy.

If you are concerned about your privacy, your settings are located under your ‘Account’ tab in the top right corner.

In the current economic environment, consumer confidence low and many businesses are feeling the pinch of poor sales. Retailers like Myers and David Jones are competing aggressively to stimulate sales in a down market, so what are you doing to improve your sales?

What strategies are you planning to entice new buyers? Perhaps discounting certain stock items may help cash-flow.

Once customers are attracted to your business, it’s much easier to cross or up sell on additional products or services. In this way it’s good to think about what items are easy to cross or up-sell. E.g. if you are a beauty salon owner, you might advertise waxing at a discounted price, and then once you have your customer through the door, up-sell them to laser hair removal or a skin care treatment.

It’s surprising how many businesses cut their marketing budgets in weaker economic conditions at a time when marketing is crucial to preserve existing clientele and attract new buyers to the business. Naturally costs and overheads are a factor for any business so the key is marketing your business smarter. If you currently use traditional marketing methods such as newspaper, magazines, radio and letter box drops why not consider web marketing. Web marketing by comparison to traditional marketing methods is quite low cost, and is often not only more effective but more measurable as well. This means you can better track the cost of obtaining a sale.

If you’re already utilising web marketing, take the time to work on developing and improving your web strategy. You should consider improving your current site from an information perspective and improving it for sales conversions. Increase or develop a social media presence, send out email newsletters, write blogs etc.

Whilst some of these strategies will drive sales immediately, other strategies will develop sales long term.

Not getting the best results from your website and not sure how to get them?
Call us today on 02 8904 0288 or complete our free website assessment here.

LinkedIn recently announced their new “Follow Company” feature. The new feature is a very similar to Twitter, but specifically focussed on following companies of interest to you. This could be of great interest to you if you are trying to keep up-to-date with latest company developments, be they business development opportunities, or even employment opportunities.

How do you follow companies on LinkedIn? Visit their blog to find out more