You can’t pull up a search engine news feed and ignore the overwhelming amount of posts regarding Google Instant Preview (GIP).  Almost every post I’ve read on the issue praises Google and speaks to the benefits of Google Instant Preview (GIP).  Some go into more detail then others.  Here’s just a small sample of claims about GIP I’ve read over the past few days…”Google Instant Preview may just shake up web design forever”. GIP is a “weapon” that Google will use to fight Facebook for internet traffic. GIP can “improve your SEO rankings”. GIP could potentially be “more important than Google Instant itself”.

Before everyone runs out and increases their retainers for a site redesign, let’s examine Google Instant Preview (GIP) a little more closely.The following is information about GIP right from Google’s own blog:  ”Instant Preview does not change our search algorithm or ranking in any way. It’s the same results, in the same order. There is also no change to how clicks are tracked.”  You heard it right from the horses mouth folks…Google Instant Preview changes nothing.  Or does it?

GIP gives users the ability to preview a website before clicking through and actually visiting it.  The one thing Google Instant Preview changes, potentially, is the CTR of the given search result.  Aside from the title tag, description tag, and URL, GIP adds a third component that effects CTR.  This is of course if the user chooses to actually click for the Google Preview.

Let’s talk about the preview’s potential effect on search result CTRs.

Users go online for 1 of 3 reasons:

1. make a purchase

2. information (purchase related or otherwise)

3. entertainment

What users want is to be able to tell if the site they are about to click on serves the need that is making them execute the search in the first place.  In other words, does this site enable me to do what I intended?  If the answer is yes, they will click on the result.  If you are optimizing your title tags, description tags, and URLs properly the user should be able to tell what intent your site fulfills.  For example – Is this an e-commerce site or an information site?  Can I watch videos or see images on this site?

Let’s go back to the intent of the search.  Users want the search result to match the intent of their search.  If I’m searching for “ink” for my printer, I obviously don’t want the IMDB listing for the movie Ink or a news article about an ink cartridge bomber.  I want an e-commerce site that sells ink cartridges.  Google Instant Preview gives users the ability to see if the website matches their intent.  But wait, I just figured out if the results matched my intent for “ink” and I wasn’t even using GIP!?!?! Amazing.

Should you ignore Google Instant Preview? Absolutely not.  You want your homepage to be clean and portray what your site is about.  The point is that you should have been doing that WAY before GIP was released.

Google Instant itself is a much broader change that is actually effecting search engine marketing metrics.  THAT is where your efforts should be focused.  I ran across a study from Marin, via the PPC Blog, which talks about the effects of Google Instant on Paid Search Ads.  The study revealed a 9% increase in impressions, a 5% increase in clicks, and a 2% increase in campaign spend in reaction to Google Instant.  THAT my friends is game changing stuff, not a simple preview that both Bing and Ask have already implemented.  If you’re interested in learning more about it’s impact on paid search and SEO visit Response Mine’s POV on Google Instant. (Shameless plug, I know).

Shockingly the changes outlined in the Marin study mean Google is making more money off of Google Instant.  Interestingly enough, everything Google does is an effort to make more money.  Providing the best user experience is just a means of dominating market share to, you guessed it, make money.

So at the end of the day, invest YOUR money in optimizing for Google Instant and leave Google Instant Preview for later.  If your homepage needs a refresh, it wouldn’t hurt to redesign it in conjunction with GIP.  Redesign because it will effect the user experience once they click through to your site, not to “optimize for Google Preview”.  You’ll see a much greater impact on your bottom line if you do.

Google’s “Instant Preview” Changes Nothing is a post from: SEO For Beginners

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Google Vs. Bing

With the seemingly global approval of the Bing/Yahoo search deal comes the start of a long lasting battle.  The search engine wars between Google and Bing have truly begun.  Now of course the search engine war has been going on since the idea of anyone making money online, but this recent deal has escalated things to a new level.  Once the implementation of the Bing/Yahoo search deal occurs sometime in Q4 (ppc interface integration is scheduled to take place in middle October), the search engine wars will really heat up.  Google has a majority of the market by far with Bing sitting somewhere between 7-10% depending on whose numbers you look at.  In Q4 of this year Bing will most likely represent about 26-28% market share, significantly more than they currently have.  At the same time, Google is not only trying to hold steady but grow their market lead.  Some people are under the impression that Google is willing to bleed market share to Bing or that Google isn’t afraid of Bing.  To those I tell you – Google’s stock price is currently trading at $566/share.  Google is paying very close attention to every move that Bing is making and counter-acting accordingly.  The purpose of the Google Vs. Bing Search Engine Wars series is to document various strategic moves each search engine is making in order to capture your searches. One thing everyone undoubtedly loves about Bing is the amazingly beautiful imagery on the home page.  Google is obviously paying attention to what people like about Bing and will attempt to re-create such features.  Today I noticed the following section on the Google homepage:

Google Bing Wars

As you can see, “New! travel the world from your Google homepage” now appears.  Hrm… I wonder where Google got that idea.  Looking deeper into the new addition to iGoogle, you will notice the beautiful imagery that you can now add as a theme to your iGoogle.  Now I now some of you are wondering, what’s new?  I’ve always been able to add different themes to my iGoogle.  The key here is the promotion of this feature on the home page and that it is entirely focused on travel and destinations, a strategy that has been working wonders for Bing.

Google Bing Wars Travel Destinations

This is just a teaser of strategic moves that Google and Bing will use against each other in the modern search engine wars.  There are many more interesting moves that will be investigated.  One that comes to mind instantly is the fact that Bing paid search click through rates are double, yes 2X, the other search engines including Google.  Right now it is not imperative for Google to react.  They get so much volume in comparison to Bing that paid search media will continue to look to Google as the leader.   Will Google change the layout of their page to increase the CTR of their paid search ads in the future as Bing’s traffic grows?  You’ll only know by checking back for upcoming parts of the ongoing series: Google Vs. Bing Search Engine Wars.

Google Vs. Bing: Search Engine Wars – Part 1 is a post from: SEO For Beginners

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Google's Twitter Algorithm

How will Google incorporate live twitter updates into their search algorithm?

News recently came out that Google and Bing will be featuring live twitter updates into their search results.  The big question here for SEO’s is how they will incorporate twitter into their algorithms.  In order to shed some light on the potential of Google’s Twitter Algorithm, I’ve looked at how different Twitter grader algorithms work and any additions to these that we might see go live.

One of the more popular site’s out there that will rank your Twitter profile is the Twitter Grader by the guys over at Hubspot.  Now while I wouldn’t suggest you optimize your Twitter profile for this tool, it is still useful for gauging success.  Over on their blog, Hubspot details what factors are part of their Twitter Grader’s algorithm.  Here’s a list of potential factors in the Google Twitter Algorithm:

1. Number of Followers: More followers leads to a higher Twitter Grade (all other things being equal). It is easy to game this (more on this in a later post) but never the less it is an important piece of the algorithm.

2. Power of Followers: The more followers the people following you have, the better.  This is a core part of Hubspot’s algorithm and will surely be part of the Google and Bing Twitter Algorithms as well.

3. Updates: More updates generally leads to a higher grade — within reason.  This is risky and potentially could reward twitter spam.

4. Update Recency: Users that are more current (i.e. time elapsed since last tweet is low) generally get higher grades.

5. Follower/Following Ratio: The higher this ratio, the better.  The weight of this factor decreases as the user excels in other areas of the algorithm (so, once a user gets to a high level of followers or a high level of engagement, the Follower/Following ratio counts less).

6. Engagement: The more retweets a user receives, the higher their grade.  This makes sense since the more references their are to your profile, the more powerful it potentially is. Further, the value of the engagement is higher based on who is being engaged. If a user with a very high Twitter Grade retweets, it counts more than if a spammy account with a very low grade retweets.

Of these 6 core Twitter metrics, some will be more useful than others.  I think the most important of these are engagement and power of followers.  Retweets will most likely turn into the equivalent of “inbound links” for normal sites.  Of the 6 above, update frequency will be counted the least as it will be extremely hard to control spam if this is a major factor.

Aside from these six metrics their are others that will most likely surface when Google and Bing launch their Twitter algorithms.  Two factors I would specifically like to touch on are relevancy and lists.

Relevancy: Relevancy is a huge part of Google’s current algorithm and it only makes sense that it will be included in the Twitter algorithm.  I foresee relevancy factoring in like this: What is the target profile tweeting about?  This will involve monitoring keyword density on all profiles.  Google will then look at your followers.  Is their “Tweet Density” similar to yours?  Google’s algorithm will reward people for having followers which are relevant.  If tweet a lot about SEO and have 600 followers yet 400 of those followers tweet mostly about furniture, the algorithm would reflect that.

Lists: Lists are a relatively new feature that most people don’t know what to make of.  I’m not sure how it will be incorporated, but it will be.  Here are some potential ways this could happen: A list to follower ratio.  This would record how many people following you have added you to a list.  I believe this metric has some serious value.  Another possibility could be a simple count of how many lists you’re on, however, by itself, I don’t believe that metric adds much value.

It will be interesting to see how Google’s Twitter Algorithm turns out.  I’m sure the obvious factors might change before this is truly incorporated into the engines.  If you have any opinions about which factors will be weighed more heavily than others, please post a comment!  With our minds combined, we might end up getting pretty close!

Google’s Twitter Algorithm is a post from: SEO For Beginners

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