Quick Update: It was noted in the comments (see below) that at least one person was not able to view the new Google layout.  The video below was shot using the Chrome browser but I also tested in Firefox and Safari – in both instances I WAS able to see the new layout.  However, I could NOT see it when testing it in Internet Explorer.  I’ll be interested to see if any of you notice the same thing.

Quick Update #2: Just after posting the update above I went back to Chrome, and searched yet again using the same topic of “coffee”.  And I was NOT able to see the navigation.  However, I CAN in Safari.  So I’m wondering if this is just a quick test or if they’re just rolling it out in some areas?  Curious indeed and just a little more than disappointed that I can’t *now* re-create it.  I’ll keep checking during the day to see if it shows up again.

No related posts.

This past Wednesday Google announced Product Listing Ads.  And rather tell you what they are, let me show you.

This first image is your typical search results page with the ads and organic listings highlighted.  This search was for “snow boots”.

Google Product Ads Example 1

This second image is another search results page but this time, this one has the Google Product Listing ads included within it.  This search was for “bed in a bag”.

Google Product Listing Ads Example 2

Notice the difference?

The new Google Product Listing ads now allow advertisers to show images next to their advertisements.

This new feature is open to those AdWords advertisers who have products in the Google Merchant Center (formerly Google Base) which was rolled out at the end of September 2009.

Unlike traditional AdWords advertisements where you pay every time someone clicks on one of your ads, you only pay whenever someone actually purchases a product from your site.

Additionally, again unlike AdWords, you don’t have to worry about keywords or any additional advertising text.  If a user searches on a keyword phrase that is relevant to a product that you offer and that product is listed in the Google Merchant Center, Google will show the most relevant products for that user along with the image, price and the product name.  As Google states:

“Product Listing Ads makes it easy for you to promote your entire product inventory on Google.com.”

It’s currently only available to certain advertisers and is still in beta.

What I find interesting is that not too long ago, some AdSense publishers realized that if you put images next to AdSense ads on your website those AdSense ads received more clicks.  This seemed to work very well for a lot of publishers until Google caught onto what was happening and made it “illegal”.

Ironically enough, they’re doing the same exact thing on their search results pages; one can only assume that it actually worked very well and so much so that Google has decided to incorporate the same strategy into their own websites.

All that said, what does this mean to you?

1. Once Google rolls this out to the public in general, it will be interesting to see if these images also show up in your AdSense ads on your website.  If they do and your website refers to say, “bed in a bag”, and Google shows ads in AdSense that also advertise “beds in a bag”, you’ll have to make some decisions as to whether or not you want competitors ads showing up on your site for the same or similar products.  I could see a lot of websites opting out of AdSense for this reason.
2. If you do have products in the Google Merchant Center, because Google will know what converts to a sale and what doesn’t, they’ll now have access to your sales data.
3. If these images begin to show at the top of the page where current AdWords text ads show, this will push down the organic search results; and in some cases “below the fold”.  Which means that web searchers will have to scroll down to view the organic search results.

The bottom line is, if you have a product and it’s listed in the Merchant Center, this could mean higher profits for you.

On the flip side, if you’re simply trying to get your website seen in the organic search results for a product search, you might have to rethink your optimization strategy.

Related posts:

1. Local Businesses Getting a Leg Up on Google
2. The Google Popularity Contest Patent
3. Give Your Business Credibility with Google Knol

1. First, visit http://www.Google.com/local/add and sign in with your Google account. If you don’t already have one, you can get one for free.
2. Click the button to add a new business listing.
3. Fill in the required information.
   Your business name. Your business name should be your legal business name for your company.
   Your telephone number. Your main telephone number should be your direct phone number. Not an 800 number. You can add additional phone numbers using this link (the add more phone numbers link).
   Your Address. Your address cannot be a PO Box. It must be your actual physical location. Additionally, all of these pieces of information should be the same as what’s listed on your website (if you have one).
4. If applicable, use an email address that is the same URL as your website. For example, if your website address is http://www.ABCCompany.com then your email address should be yourname@ABCCompany.com.
5. Enter in your website URL.
6. Give your business a description. Describe what your business does and how it can benefit someone reading your local listing. If possible, include a positive review that your company has received.
7. Enter a category for your business. Begin typing and Google will display a listing of categories. If one of the categories Google suggests to you fits well with your business select that one. If not, enter in what best fits your business. If your business fits into multiple categories, you can click the link to add another category. Google let’s you choose up to five of them. Click next.
8. Finally, you’ll be able to add details to your local listing such as your operating hours, what kinds and types of payments you take, any photos or videos of your business and any other additional details you’d like to add. Remember, the more you add, the more helpful it will be to web searchers.
9. When you’re finished, click submit and Google will ask you to verify your listing either by a telephone call or postcard. If you choose telephone call, remember to be near your business phone as they will call you at the telephone number you provided in your business listing and provide you a PIN number on the screen. If you’re not, simply request that they send you a postcard and they’ll send you your PIN number via postcard.

Once you’ve verified your local business, it should appear within Google’s search results within 12 hours.

Related posts:

1. Google Paid Local Listings – Coming Soon to a SERP Near You!
2. Local Businesses Getting a Leg Up on Google

Now, it’s my job to help you understand this patent so here I will do my absolute best to de-construct this new patent and help you understand it in plain English.

In a nutshell, this new patent allows Google to take multiple query paths and associate them so that one URL wins out above the others when it’s related to that same kind of query path.

Here’s what I mean.

And for the record, whenever Google refers to “content items” in their patent, or when I refer to them in this blog post, they (and I) are referring to URLs; whether that URL be a “video and/or audio files, web pages for particular subjects, news articles, etc.”

I’ll use an example that Google used in their patent.

When someone visits Google and does a search, during that search session they’ll revise their queries if they aren’t getting the kinds of results that they want, eventually clicking on a URL after they’re done revising their search.

If a “statistically significant number of users” submit that same set of queries and then end up clicking on the same URL this URL will be considered more relevant and that URL will then get a ranking increase.

In another example, if 55% of searchers using a query path such as apples/bananas/strawberries click on FruitURL1 and 35% of searchers using this same path click on FruitURL2, the search engine can rank FruitURL1 first and FruitURL2 second.  These can also be ranked as #1 and #2 whenever someone searches on apples/bananas or even apples, bananas, or strawberries as long as that path is identified as being related to the original query path that ranked FruitURL1 first and FruitURL2 second.

In other words, if more people click on FruitURL1 whenever they do a similar query that is identified as part of a query path apples -> bananas -> strawberries, then that URL will get a better ranking in the organic search results.

There’s many more examples provided in the patent itself but suffice it to say, that this is quite honestly, a popularity contest.  The more people click through to your website within the organic search results, the more likely you are to have a better ranking.

Think if it like a CTR (click-through-rate) of your website in the natural search results.  Much like your positioning in the Google AdWords program is determined by how well your ad performs, such is the case with this new patent.  If it’s determined that more people searching on apples/oranges/bananas tend to visit FruitURL1, then FruitURL1 will gain a better position in the organic search engine rankings.

What I found interesting however, is this little snippet of text taken from the patent which gives a little bit of insight into exactly how Google ranks pages.

The search results can, for example, be ranked by a quality measure and a relevance measure. For example, a particular web page can have a quality measure derived from the number of other web pages that are linked to the particular web page, and can have an information retrieval score related to the matching the query terms to words in the particular web page. The information retrieval score can be combined with the page rank to give a final rank to the particular web page.

From this little bit of information we can determine a few things that indicate how Google does in fact rank web pages:

• The “quality measure” of a web page is determined by the number of sites linking to that web page (no surprise there).
• The “information retrieval score” is determined by the number of matching query terms on the web page.  Note that this doesn’t mention where on the web page, only that it looks at the web page itself to see if there are matching query terms.
• The “information retrieval score” can be combined with the page rank to give the page a final rank.  Here again is the dreaded PageRank.  Now, to be fair, the term “page rank” is not capitalized nor does it have a trademark symbol associated with it, but one can only assume that PageRank is definitely playing a role in how web pages rank even though Google has recently removed PageRank from the Google Webmaster tools area (and updated PageRank across the board just recently).  Check out this post by Barry Schwartz where he states that “…according to Susan Moskwa from the Google Webmaster Central team “…it [PageRank] was removed [from Google's Webmaster tools] because Google keeps telling webmasters “that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much.” They felt it was “silly” to keep telling webmasters that, and at the same time show it in Webmaster Tools. So Google removed it from Webmaster Tools. I think this is a good thing, since I agree it is obsessed over too much, plus what Google showed in Webmaster Tools was not very useful to webmasters.”So, all this said, I wonder then why it’s referred to within the patent?  Since it’s not used in it’s proper form, spelled PageRank, do we then assume that they’re just using the phrase “page rank” as an overall encompassing term, not associated with the actual trademarked PageRank?

  Since they’ve removed it from Google Webmaster tools but then days later updated the PageRank on the Google toolbar across the board for websites, one can only assume that they are referring to actual PageRank.  Never let it be said that Google was transparent.

The bottom line is, this new patent appears as though it will begin ranking web content based upon the number of clicks that an individual URL gets by actual web searchers and the paths that they take to get there.  So my advice to you, as a website owner, is to be sure that people want to click over to your website.

Do you offer compelling reasons to do so?  Are these reasons contained within your web pages’ descriptions?

If not, now might be a good time to get to work on that.

Related posts:

1. Google Webmaster Tools Sitemap Tip
2. Local Businesses Getting a Leg Up on Google
3. Google’s Link Operator – What’s it REALLY Holding Back?

Google has begun to roll out a new service where you can now pay to have a Google local listing. How soon it will come to your area is tough to say but right now it’s being tested in San Fransisco and San Diego and truth be told, it’s really too soon to see if it pays off or not.

Probably one of the most disturbing things that I’ve noticed thus far is that if you do a search in one of these markets, say “Salon San Diego” nearly everything above the fold is an advertisement leaving the organic search results pushed to the bottom of the pile.

(Note that in the image below, the local salon’s in San Diego that are using this service are highlighted at the top of the page with the blue balloons next to them.)

Google Local San Diego

Now this is not to say that every single time you do a search in Google will you see and entire half-page full of ads. It only (at this point in time) appears to be those more competitive local markets.

So how is this supposed to work?

1. You need a verified Google local listing within the Google Local Business Center.

   “…Local Listing Ads is available for business owners who have verified their free listings in Google Local Business Center in a limited set of categories based on advertising policy, and other considerations.”

2. When you purchase a local listing ad, your ad will show up whenever a local user searches for your kind of business.
   1. The ads will show up on Google.com and on Google Maps.
   2. You get your first 30 days free.
   3. You’ll get reports on how many people called you, how many people clicked, and how many people wanted directions to your business.
3. Unlike AdWords where you bid a price on specific keywords, the only thing that Google Local Listing Ads require is that you select a category (A category; meaning ONE) for your business and then pay a flat monthly fee for that ad.
   1. The flat fee is set by Google themselves and is based on how many people are looking for your kind of business in your area.  (So in other words, Google tells you how much you’ll have to pay based on their estimation and you either pay that or you don’t get a paid local listing).
   2. Second, Google is offering a “free call tracking” service.  How they’re doing this I don’t yet know (the local paid listing is not yet available in my area), but what Google will do is give you an announcement prior to that call that says “This caller brought to you by Google”.  As of today this is NOT optional.

Now, something that I want you to notice in the screenshot above, is that there is a 7-box (a map with 7 listings next to it) that are not listed in the Google Local Paid listings above.  That said, I can only surmise that the added benefit to having a Google local paid listing is to show up at the very top of the page where you might see typical AdWords ads like so:

My largest concern was that the typical search results we’re all used to seeing would be heading out and only the sponsored results would remain.  This however, does not seem to be the case (at least not yet).

In summary, it’s really too soon to say how this will affect local businesses (if at all), and how much Google is going to charge for these listings in your market because obviously it will differ greatly depending upon your location.

This will definitely make for an interesting test as soon as they bring it to all markets.

Related posts:

1. Google Local Business – 9 Steps to Adding Your Google Local Listing
2. Local Businesses Getting a Leg Up on Google
3. Give Your Business Credibility with Google Knol

In around two months time, updates from Facebook will be integrated into Bing search.

What this means to you is that if any of your privacy settings at Facebook are set to “everyone” then all of those updates you make at Facebook will be publicly available on Bing.

*I think I just saw you cringe.*

So unless you don’t want everything you say at Facebook to be out there for the entire world to see, you need to make some changes.

The good news is, this isn’t happening for a couple of months yet so you’ve got plenty of time to change your privacy permissions.

Here’s how you do that:

1. Login to Facebook
2. Click on “Settings” in the upper right hand corner
3. Change the settings so that nothing listed says “everyone”.

And don’t think that just because Bing is now in the picture that Google won’t be far behind…at least on some front.  It’s long been talked about that Facebook is a huge Google competitor.  Yet here comes Bing with the ability to integrate these Facebook updates…which Google has yet to do and which I’m sure was a slap in the face.

Maybe that’s why Google announced that they’ll be integrating real-time Twitter updates just like Bing (who got there first by the way).

All of a sudden, Bing is becoming a huge thorn in Google’s side.  I see a lot of “playing catch-up” going on lately.  But hey, a little competition never hurt anyone right?

Related posts:

1. Google vs. Bing – SEO Style
2. On Bing…

Transcript

One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is “How do I get my site into Google?” And the process is a very easy and simple one.

There’s actually one of two ways to get your site found by Google.  The first way is to have another website that is already listed in Google link to you.  This can be done in various ways:

• If you’re a regular on a forum in the same industry that your website is about, you can add your new website in your signature.  Forums, especially active forums, tend to get indexed quite regularly.
• You can write an article on the same topic as your website and submit that article to places like EzineArticles.com or GoArticles.com.  Both of these places get visited very often by Google.
• You can leave a real (not spammy) comment on a regularly visited blog.  Typically when you leave blog comments, the blog owner allows you to add your website URL.  Be sure however that the blog is a “do follow” blog.  That is, they allow the search engines to follow the links off of their site back to the site source.  Click here for a list of do follow blogs.

The second way to get your site indexed by Google is to submit your sitemap to them.  A sitemap file is a list of all the links contained on your website and is Google’s preferred way of finding and indexing your website.

Sitemaps are XML web pages that are created for the purpose of letting the search engines know about all of the pages on your website and they’re essential for getting all of your web pages indexed in a search engine.

Although XML format of a web page might sound a little intimidating, you’ll be happy to know that there are plenty of services online that will create one for you.  http://www.xml-sitemaps.com is one of them.

Once you have a good set of pages created for your website, you can simply tell xml-sitemaps to create a sitemap file for you which you can then move to your web host.  Once there, you’ll want to create a Google Webmaster Tools account at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ and then submit the sitemap URL to Google.  This way, Google will be notified that you have submitted a sitemap and will generally visit that page within 24 hours; oftentimes less.  Aside from a search engine robot finding one of your pages through a link, this is one of the best ways to notify Google that you have a new website with content.

While Google doesn’t always guarantee that they’ll crawl your sitemap, you’ll generally find that they do so within 24 hours of you submitting the sitemap to them.

In our Premium BoneheadSEO membership, I discuss Google’s Webmaster Tools in depth.  Visit http://BoneheadSEO.com for more information.

Using either or both of these ways will get your site indexed in Google.

Related posts:

1. Getting a Handle on Your Canonicals
2. Give Your Business Credibility with Google Knol
3. Google’s Link Operator – What’s it REALLY Holding Back?

Here’s what Chris has to say:

1. Encode video files with good metadata like titles, dates, authors, descriptions and keywords.

2. Offer multiple formats (e.g. mov, mpeg, mp4, flv).

3. Include keywords (and the word “video”) in the filename.

4. On the page, follow general SEO principles for optimizing (title, meta, H1, etc. tags and URLs).

5. Include contextually related links to articles and other videos on the page.

6. Post captions and/or abstracts as additional relevant on-page content.

7. Use Unique URLs.

8. Use one video per URL.

9. Use embedded players rather than pop-ups or links to files.

10. Create nav links to the video content.

11. Place video files in one central directory called “videos” off the root of your folder structure.

12. Enable comments.

13. Include social bookmarking tools.

14. Allow visitors to subscribe to your videos.

15. Let viewers grab your embed code – easily (with a link).

16. Remember internal linking (consider site-wide links in your page footer).

17. Distribute your video to the top video search sharing sites.

18. Include titles, descriptions & keywords on YouTube, etc.

19. Create a video site map with a mRSS feed.

20. Control associated page text to optimize for search engines.

21. Control the player (which may drive future video SEO).

22. Shorter videos are better.

23. Don’t spend a fortune.

24. Include end slates with URLs.

25. Drive people back to your site.

26. Thumbnail images matter.

27. Look for new opportunities for video placement (think about things like Google’s product search).

28. Figure out what keyword phrase is most relevant (and winnable) for your video.

29. Look into including videos in Google Place Pages.

30. Set up a Google video XML sitemap.

31. Use tools like Tubemogul’s to optimize metadata across the major video sharing sites.

32. Track viewership.

33. Advertise with video via rich search ads with Google/Yahoo and YouTube promoted videos.

34. Make sure your videos live on your domain and use 3rd parties for distribution purposes.

35. Stay on top of technology changes and new standards.

Source:  WebProNews

No related posts.

Before I confuse you too much let me show you the difference and then lay out what I’m going to talk about first.

The only reason I coupled them together was because sometimes people refer to these kinds of searches in the same way…although they are quite different.

The new Google search options I’m referring to in this post reside underneath the “Show Options” section of a Google search results page.

When you use the “Show Options” link you’ll see that whatever you searched on in within Google can be narrowed down by specific areas.  So if you searched on “SEO” for example, you can click the show options link and narrow down that search to show:

• Only videos about SEO.
• Only news about SEO.
• Only blogs about SEO.
• Only forums about SEO.

(I made a video a while back about the Google Wonder Wheel underneath the search options that you might find useful).

Google has continued to update the options in this section and have now added:

• “Past Hour” so that you can see the newest results for the term you searched.
• “Specific Date Range” so that you can search for your topic within a certain time span.
• “More shopping sites & fewer shopping sites” – allowing you to first research a product and then make a purchase when you’re ready to see all of the stores that sell that product.
• “Books, Blogs & News” – you can now click on this link and only see the books related to your search term, the blogs, and the news.
• “Visited pages & Not Yet Visited” – This can be particularly helpful if you don’t want to see the same website over and over again and instead are trying to find fresh information.

These search options will definitely help you narrow down your search results.  If you’re interested in the full Google post about it, visit http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/refine-your-search-results-with-new.html

No related posts.

I can’t possibly be the only one.

See, here’s the thing…

When you use AdWords to advertise, you have three ways of adding your keywords to advertise on.

Broad match

“Phrase Match” and

[Exact Match]

I’m not going to get into all of the details on what each of these are but the differences are vitally important and I’ll cover that in an upcoming video, but suffice it to say, if you want all of your keywords to be in phrase match or broad match they NEED those characters around the keyword.

The problem is, Google doesn’t make it easy to add these characters unless you use their keyword tool.

But sometimes I don’t use their keyword tool, actually, I only use it when comparing keywords – I get a vast majority of my keyword data from Wordtracker.

And it’s a pain in the butt to add each of these characters to my keywords so that they show up how I want them to in AdWords.

Well, I’ve found this handy little tool that will do it for you at http://www.formatclick.com/index.php.  Just follow the instructions, paste in your keywords and just like that you’ll have all of your keywords ready with the phrase match option or the exact match option included.

Oh, and in the event that you’re in need of some misspelled keywords, head on over to http://www.selfseo.com/keyword_typo_generator.php which lets you enter in a keyword or keyword phrase and get multiple ways that keyword or phrase could be misspelled.

Now, in case you’re totally clueless as to what AdWords is and how it works, here’s a quick video from Google (not mine obviously) that should help clear things up for you:

Related posts:

1. New Video Blog Post – How to Use AdWords Correctly