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Google Adds Star Rating System to Maps G+

May 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Google is introducing the star rating system across a range of its products, Google Maps for Mobile, Google Search and Google Plus Local. Local search really needs a lot of attention going forward as SEO evolves and multi-device use increases.

From Google;

We’re mapping individual ratings to the star system using the following framework:

Previous rating scale

Five star system

Poor-Fair

2

Good

3

Very Good

4

Excellent

5

 

The changes will appear to some users today and will continue to roll out on Google Maps for Mobile, Google search results and Google+ Local in upcoming months.

http://googleandyourbusiness.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/local-businesses-get-new-rating-system.html

Filed Under: Google Places

Google Updates Places Quality Guidelines

February 15, 2013 by

Just came through updates in the Google Places Quality guidelines (http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528) with regards to practitioners and departments within businesses and it is always interesting to see what they are up to. Managing every business in the world using automated scraping is always going to be messy to get right.

Quote :

  • Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts.
    • Individual practitioners may be listed individually as long as those practitioners are public-facing within their parent organization. Common examples of such practitioners are doctors, dentists, lawyers, and real estate agents. The practitioner should be directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours. A practitioner should not have multiple listings to cover all of his or her specializations.
    • Departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may be listed separately. These departments must be publicly distinct as entities or groups within their parent organization, and ideally will have separate phone numbers and/or customer entrances.

Be careful with your local business listings and if you need help get in touch.

Filed Under: Google Places

Social Networking Looking to Take Over as the Most Popular Online Activity

October 13, 2011 by

Social Networking Looking to Take Over as the Most Popular Online Activity

Before the days of Friendster and MySpace, people mainly used the Internet to check their favorite news sites, see what is in their inboxes, chat with others, and search online for any information that they need. The popularly of online shopping has only begun as people started to feel more confident about submitting sensitive information online, thanks to the greater security software and services.

Internet usage wasn’t very frequent back then because Internet connections were slow and only dial-up subscriptions were the most affordable. But now with high-speed Internet access being more affordable and wireless Internet being more available, Internet habits have changed.

Early social networking sites including Friendster and MySpace made huge splashes in the web because of how easy it was to share information with others and keep in touch. People loved the thrills of finding new friends or searching for old friends. But the innovation didn’t stop there once the concept of web applications turned into a reality.

Now we have big social networking giants like Facebook along with other popular sites like YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn and many others with social networking functions. People can get a lot more productive online, thanks to these applications and that caused a huge surge in social media usage. It is even possible to play games socially with others without installing any major client software.

As a result, the number of adult Internet users grow from a measly 8% to 65% in just a 5 year period. The numbers never went down either so it is expected for this number to grow as more popular services start incorporating social networking elements.

The evolution of smartphones and the widespread buzz of tablet computers also played a major role for increased social media activity. Many of the smartphones that you buy today have Wi-Fi and 3G features enabled so you can see some updated social media activity the moment you turn on your phone. People find it more convenient to check their messages or send updates to all of their friends through their favorite mobile device because it is easier and mobile gadgets in general have better battery life than laptops.

Hardware evolution isn’t stopping either as top companies like Intel and AMD are focusing on making their chips smaller so they are more energy efficient and provide better performance so it can handle web applications for a longer period of time. Companies in the software end like Microsoft and RIM are also trying to get out of their enterprise-focused visions and taking consumers as an equal priority to compete with Apple.

People love to socialize online these days and as long as the information is easily accessible from their fingertips, social networking activity will be the norm. At the same time, these different social networking services are competing so you can be certain that improvements will be made in all ends.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

10 percent of google local search clicks go to google places pages

September 27, 2011 by

Wow interesting statements and answers coming from US senate hearing witness claims, from Nextag, Yelp, Fairsearch against Google;

CLAIM: “Is a consumer (or a small business, for that matter) well served when Google artificially promotes its own properties regardless of merit? This has nothing to do with helping consumers get to the best information; it has everything to do with generating more revenue.”

RESPONSE: In fact, most of the click traffic (roughly two-thirds of clicks) from our local search result pages goes directly to small business websites, and review sites make up the next largest percentage (about a quarter of clicks). Less than 10% of clicks from our local results page go to Google Place Pages.
see; http://googlecompetition.blogspot.com/2011/09/responses-to-senate-hearing-witness.html

Filed Under: Google Places Tagged With:

Organic SEO

July 12, 2011 by

So what is organic seo? Unfortunately there are few terms kicking around in this arena which are not clear. For example what is the difference or meaning of ‘search engine marketing’ versus ‘search engine optimisation‘? Many folks use the term search engine marketing to refer to PPC or paid search where traffic is bought on cost per click (CPC) basis. This is slightly confusing because where does that leave search engine optimisation?

Another way of looking at this is using the terms, natural search marketing or organic search marketing or seo, versus paid search  / ppc/ or search engine marketing the latter inferring that you buying traffic based on CPC.

So organic seo what does it entail, how does one go about it? Organic SEO is about doing things naturally and letting the search engines find you, doing things like;

  • making sure a search engine can see all the sites pages
  • adding content pages to target keywords
  • coding all site elements to be search friendly
  • networking the site on the web, directories etc
  • being active in social media using twitter, facebook, linkedin
  • releasing press releases
  • link bait, which is writing great content people want to link to.

We are big fans of natural organic SEO and prefer to operate this way.

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , ,

Google PageRank update beware the red herring

June 28, 2011 by

I can see Google has released a Toolbar PR update however before you get excited remember it is bit of a red herring. It has little relationship to how Google ranks a website, the live PR number is normally 3 months or so old as well.

We have gone to PR7 which sounds great but in terms of why a website ranks highly it is another story. Of course incoming links or votes are a major part of how search engines rank a website don’t get me wrong there, but Toolbar PR is really a bit of a joke these days. You need to do your own research and analysis using tools like, Cemper’s LinkResearchTool, SEOmoz and Majestic to see what the real link story is.

What really matters is traffic and sales at the end of the day, top rankings positions certainly pull more click throughs.

How is your PR looking post update?

Filed Under: Google

SEOMoz 2011 search ranking factors report is out

June 9, 2011 by

Always a interesting read and this years version is no exception. No surprise the data reports the ongoing rise of Social media signals in search engine ranking factors.
It will be interesting to see what Google can do to change the over focus on keyword domains winning top ranking positions versus sites that have relevant content and links to back them up. This is more of a read for those SEO’s out there in the industry, see more here; http://bit.ly/miOb3x

Filed Under: Search Marketing Tagged With:

The Google view on article marketing for seo

April 13, 2011 by

So what is the value of article marketing? If you consider the Google duplicate content rule, putting copies of the same articles all around the web does not make a lot of sense. In the video below Matt Cutts from Google tells us he does not recommend this strategy;

However a well placed well written article which is then linked to using social media, bookmarked and tweeted etc will drive traffic.

Filed Under: Google

Google’s February Algo Update

March 10, 2011 by

Interesting to start seeing results of how this ‘Farmer’ update has effected serps and traffic.

Google’s statement that it effects 11.8% of its search results is surprising.  Targeting sites that have a low level of original content sounds good to me, sites like ezinearticles.com and articlesbase.com have lost out. The dubious seo method of spinning content then blasting it out via auto submit software to juice links has always been a ugly method.

Google is now a monster generating $30 Billion in revenue last year and the barriers to entry keep getting bigger.
Google’s engineer Amit Singhal said; “this week’s change is the “biggest in years that targeted site quality” in particular…”
Sistrix data shows low quality sites losing out;

# Domain Change SISTRIX (before) SISTRIX (after) # KWs (before) # KWs (after)
1 wisegeek.com -77% 121,58 28,22 74.024 21.940
2 ezinearticles.com -90% 65,08 6,65 184.508 54.277
3 suite101.com -94% 54,04 3,28 178.373 36.904
4 hubpages.com -87% 55,16 7,40 152.998 50.178
5 buzzle.com -85% 43,25 6,55 86.472 24.423
6 associatedcontent.com -93% 38,29 2,57 216.429 53.512
7 freedownloadscenter.com -90% 30,26 3,01 42.486 7.992
8 essortment.com -91% 25,73 2,32 27.501 7.459
9 fixya.com -80% 28,78 5,83 62.034 36.167
10 americantowns.com -91% 24,88 2,18 26.000 9.799
11 lovetoknow.com -83% 25,75 4,28 49.544 17.833
12 articlesbase.com -94% 19,96 1,16 82.274 31.365
13 howtodothings.com -84% 21,20 3,39 33.222 7.601
14 mahalo.com -84% 20,49 3,23 33.875 9.740
15 business.com -93% 17,24 1,13 21.556 4.813
16 doityourself.com -77% 20,89 4,90 23.256 6.870
17 merchantcircle.com -85% 18,43 2,67 93.347 34.681
18 thefind.com -83% 18,95 3,27 74.506 45.495
19 findarticles.com -90% 16,98 1,74 64.810 20.189
20 faqs.org -91% 16,52 1,46 33.648 11.142
21 tradekey.com -89% 16,83 1,79 37.364 16.268
22 answerbag.com -91% 12,93 1,11 67.314 26.054
23 trails.com -87% 12,05 1,62 38.346 8.511
24 examiner.com -79% 10,54 2,19 70.781 31.272
25 allbusiness.com -88% 8,86 1,08 16.457 6.034

Source; http://www.sistrix.com/blog/985-google-farmer-update-quest-for-quality.html

Filed Under: Google

Mobile Marketing is here pay attention!

March 2, 2011 by

Opportunity abounds with mobile marketing, if you don’t know what a Quick Response Code is you need to get with the program quickly.

People on the run are using mobile search and their mobiles phones to find info and compare prices in stores using QR Codes,  its also worth looking at setting these up with your Google places and for getting reviews from your customers. Another great use for QR Codes is to offer bonuses instore like, scan and  register with us and we will give you a discount when you return next time.

Mobile payments yes what better way to pay them than via your phone, this is how everything is going to go in my opinion

Mobile Websites, what happens when someone visits your site via a mobile device like a iPhone, Windows or Android driven phone? How does your business present, is the site designed to deliver mobile friendly layout, images and is it easy to use?

Mobile apps apps and more apps keep coming, location content based on where you are including social apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, need a pizza where are you going to look?

Don’t think SMS is going anywhere either, it is still great way to communicate with your audience.
Video is also perfect on mobile, and the best way to deliver your elevator pitch on your product or service!

So now is the time to start thinking about your mobile marketing strategy.

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged With: