This week Amit Singhal, who led development of real-time search at Google, gave us a little insight into how Google is ranking tweets as a part of their real-time search efforts.

Tweets are a main component of Google’s real-time search results, but up until now there was very little information available about the algorithm used to rank these microblog posts.  One factor of their ranking doesn’t really surprise those in the SEO industry, as it is similar to Google’s PageRank technology used for websites in traditional search. Basically, Google judges the value of a website by looking at it’s link structure – how many links on the web are pointing to the site, and the number of pages linking to those linkers. The same is true for their ranking of tweets, just replace the word ‘link’ in the previous sentence with the word ‘follower’. Of course, quality comes into play as well – the better the reputation of any given follower, the better your reputation is as well.

“You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone–then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers,” his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widely, Singhal says.

He’s quick to point out it is not a popularity contest, but it sure seems that way. Granted, judging number of followers may seem a good indicator of the level of clout one person has, but this model doesn’t take into account ‘tweet’ of originality. Say a small time reporter breaks a big story and tweets about it from their personal account, and then CNN tweets it from theirs – CNN will get the credit, while the reporter responsible for the news gets lost in the shuffle. Also, social media is a different ballgame than traditional websites, and using this rank method may not transfer well. If I place a link on my website to another page it is a very clear sign that I do, in fact, endorse that page – which may not be the case for all the people I follow. For example, I may follow competitors to keep track of my industry when I would never link to their site directly. Hopefully as real-time search develops Google will come up with a better way to deal with the Twitter account reputation factor.

Google has also developed a way to determine which tweets should show up for more common terms, such as celebrity names or current event keywords. The idea being to weed out spam and low quality tweeting from appearing in the results.  A common practice on twitter is to include  hashtags – basically the # sign following by the topic keyword. It’s a great way of keeping tweets about the same topic connected, and to get your tweet seen by those following the conversation. Unfortunately the practice that began as a useful organizational idea has been abused by spammers, and Google has determined it could be a red-flag marker of lower quality tweets.

Also, Google is scanning to find the “signal in the noise” to help sort through the tweets from different sources and viewpoints to determine the most up to the minute, relevant tweets for these popular terms.  They are essentially looking for a sudden influx of similar tweets, for example tweets that mention ‘hospital’ along with ‘Lady GaGa’,  and consider that evidence that the particular event mentioned is most relevant.

While real-time search encompasses many things and Google has intentions to continue refining their real-time results, Twitter updates are currently a major component. It’s nice to have the ranking factors those in SEM assumed were affecting tweet placement confirmed by the source.

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

That’s what Google CEO Eric Schmidt said when responding to concerns raised about internet privacy and recent updates to the search engine.  The comment created a mini firestorm, with internet industry blogs and forums lighting up in discussion…  And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Over the last couple of weeks Google has made quite a few announcements that are rapidly changing the game for users and search marketers alike – and they are doing so pretty much under the radar.

The most noticeable change for the average user was Google’s inclusion of Real-time Search, currently in the form of “relevant” tweets.  You can read Google’s official announcement for the basics, the general idea being that users can now get an idea of what is happening right this second in regard to any given subject.  Seems like a good idea in theory, but check out this post from Rae Hoffman of Outspoken Media for a surprisingly scary look into how Google’s solution could go very very wrong.

The second change was the universal roll out of personalized search.  Until very recently, Google returned pretty much the same results for everyone. Meaning, if user A ran a query and user B ran the same query, they would get back the same results. This simply isn’t the case anymore. Again, I’ll point to Google’s official announcement of this to explain how it works. In a nutshell, Google now keeps track of your search history (for 180 days) and uses that to customize your results, whether you are logged in or not.  Sort of makes you view Eric Schmidt’s glib comment about internet privacy in a whole new light.

Now, personalized search results are not new. They were available previously as an opt-in service for those users with a Google account, this change makes personalized results the norm for every user, or, opt-out.  The problem with this is that the only mention of this change was a blog post, the one I pointed to above…that’s it. No space on the search pages announcing the change, no easily identifiable opt-out button, nothing.  A user would have to spot the ‘View Customizations’ link, or the ‘Web History’ link up at the top to realize that tracking is being used to customize – neither are particularly visible, and the average user won’t be that clued in. To me, and to many others in the industry blogging about these changes, it seems a little too ‘Big Brother’.

So what does all this mean for your SEO campaigns?

Rest assured, the ‘normal’ search results are dead.  For better or worse, the way Google handled this announcement ensures that very few users will opt-out of personalized results. However, the reality of the situation is that ‘normal’ results have been dying for a while now, and many of us saw these changes coming in one form or another.

The main strategies of your SEO campaigns won’t drastically change. At least in the beginning, there will still be tons of queries that return ‘normal’ results – until Google gathers enough data for users to personalize them.  Even when results are personalized, Google will still use their algorithm to rank those sites, and you’ll want to optimize so you have a chance of getting that top spot for any user.  First impressions are now more critical than ever, as the more a user clicks on your site from their results, the more likely it is you’ll jump to the top of that list.

There’s a lot of debate right now about whether these changes have Google moving down a dangerous path. In response to the privacy issue Mozilla’s Director of Community Development put up a blog post inviting users to switch to Bing.  It’s a big deal.  But it can be (and has been) argued that Google has a monopoly on the search industry, and as such I don’t see many users jumping ship because of these changes – especially when you consider the fact many won’t know about them.

A few weeks ago Google Analytics became even more useful.  Instead of a measly 4 goals, webmasters are now allowed to track up to 20. It’s a given that you can probably think of more than 4 things you’d like people to do when they visit your site, now you can track and access that data without creating multiple profiles and switching back and forth. It’s welcome news to say the least.

There’s really no excuse for not having goal tracking set up within your analytics account. It’s essential to know how your SEO strategies are improving your site’s overall performance and your online marketing ROI. Setting up goals will allow you to judge this, not just by visits, but by the actions those visitors take.

Each profile in your account can have up to four “goal sets”, each of these sets can contain up to five goals.  In addition to the standard URL destination goal, analytics now has the option to track engagement goals – such as time on site and pages per visit.

URL Destination Goal Tracking

This type of goal is used when you want to know how many visitors came to a specific page on your site.  Webmasters can use this method for something as simple as keeping track of how many people visited a blog page.  It can also be used to track form submissions or registrations by entering the ‘thank you’ or confirmation page as the URL goal. When you set up a URL destination goal you have a choice between 3 different ‘Goal Types’, also known as ‘match types’. The type of goal that is appropriate will vary based on how your website is built and the page you are interested in tracking. Here’s a basic breakdown to help you decide which type is best for your goal:
Exact Match – to use this type of goal the URL entered as your goal must match the URL shown in the reports exactly. For example, if you want to track the page www.mysite/contact-us_thank-you.html, you need to enter /contact-us_thank-you.html as your goal.
Head Match – use this type of goal when the URL is the same for this step of the goal, but is followed by unique session or user identifiers.  Enter the URL but leave out the unique values. For example, if you want to track www.mysite.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=528, but the ‘id’ changes for each user, just enter ‘//checkout.cgi?page=1′. This will cause the goal to be counted no matter what id number is assigned.
Regular Expression Match – use this type to match your URLs. This is useful when the url is dynamically generated and can vary between users. For example, if a user could be coming from one of many subdomains, and your URLs use session identifiers, use regular expressions to define the constant element of your URL. For instance, ‘page=1′ will match ’sports.mysite.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=002,’ and ‘football.mysite.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&language=fr&id=19.‘

Time on Site Goal Tracking

A new goal available in Analytics is the Time on Site goal. This allows webmasters to create goals based on how long users stay on their site using hours, minutes and/or seconds.  For example, if you notice that visitors tend to become customers if they spend more than 5 minutes on the site, it may be worth keeping data on those visits that last. In this case you would simply select ‘Time on Site’ as the Goal Type and select greater than 5 minutes as the goal. You can also track visits that last less than a determined length of time.

Pages per Visit Goal Tracking

The pages per visit goal allows webmasters to keep track of visits that browse through a specific number of pages. Also known as ‘depth of visit’, this information can be valuable when determining how engaging your site is. Options of ‘more than’, ‘equal to’ or ‘less than’ a number of visits are available so you can completely customize how you’d like to use this goal.

While the data for these engagement goals has been available in Analytics for quite some time it’s nice to be able to set them up as goals and gain the ability to analyze it further. Obviously this is just a basic overview – there are many way to customize and break down your goal data, such as using filters, funnels, advanced segments and custom reporting. Google Analytics is a wonderful (not to mention free!) tool, stay tuned to the Stone blog for more tips, tricks and updates on using the program wisely down the road.

image from here

Google announced a change to its search infrastructure and is calling the change “Google Caffeine.” Implying faster web results, the objectives of the next generation of Google were revealed in a Google Webmaster Central Blog post last month.

Three words are very prominent in the post:

1. CRAWL

2. INDEX

3. RANK

Google wants to do these three things ”as quickly as possible.”

Caffeine is coming on the heels of Microsoft’s new Bing search engine which has a knack for reporting news very quickly.   Not to be outdone, Google has created Caffeine to bring more relevant results to the search rankings faster.

Not only does Google want to be quicker on the draw, Google wants to be more efficient.   A recent New York Times article on job opportunities in statistics mentioned a Googler who had worked on a new Google algorithm model that “increased the chances that the crawler would scan frequently updated web pages and make fewer trips to more static ones.”

For search engine optimization, Caffeine certainly places more emphasis on marketers to keep their content updated and fresh.

Google made historic news yesterday by declaring they do not use the meta keywords tag. Okay, I am being sarcastic.  Google hasn’t used the meta keywords tag for a long time and any “SEO” should know that.   So why did Google blog about this, on the record?  At least two reasons, (1) people continue to sue over it by claiming copyright infringement and people confuse the meta keywords with the meta description, which Google does recommend to use.

So there are official posts from Matt Cutts, the Google Blog and Search Engine Land trying to erase any confusion from people who are new to this space.

If you want to know which meta tags Google does pay attention to, see this FAQ. Plus, Google’s JohnMu tweeted that Google also does “not adhere to the “revisit-after” meta tag,” if you wanted to know.

Finally, here is a video if you don’t want to read any of this:

Google’s Matt Cutts talks about the link issues that webmasters should be aware of now that Google is improving it’s crawling of Java Script links:

Google is warning webmasters about duplicate content and various site issues.  A few months back, Google explained the multiple pros and cons of duplicacy in the content and the related issues showing their concern over it.

The Duplicate Content and Multiple Site Issue was a hot topic at last month’s Search Engine Strategies  conference in San Jose. Google has reproduced the talk on the Google Webmaster Central YouTube Channel.

A great discussion thread on Webmaster World regarding their poll that ran last week asking Would You Allow Google to Manage Your AdWords Account? To a seasoned PPC manager, the results were not surprising.  An overwhelming majority of the responses were basically, “no way!”  In short, readers feel that the Google AdWords representatives who manage accounts for big and small advertisers cannot do as good a job as an SEM company or someone who manages it themselves.   There are many stories in the thread, mostly negative about their experience with having Google manage their account.

Just take a look at the pie chart, 87% said no, they would not allow Google to manage their AdWords campaigns. That is out of 150 Webmaster World reader responses.

The other responses said that they would allow Google do the set up of the initial campaign but then take it over from that point going forward.  That really means, no, they won’t allow Google to manage their campaign.

To take a step back, Google has a large stable of staffers just down the street from our office ready to help you set up and continue to maintain your Google AdWords account.   And they do it for free. The issue is, at least according to the stories in the thread, they don’t manage the accounts as effectively or as smart as you would yourself or as a professional PPC management company. At least, those are the overwhelming opinions in the thread.

Google can’t take the time to truly learn and understand an individual marketers business.  That is why there are so many advantages to working with a local SEM resource.

Just remember, “Free” is not always a good investment.

Search Engine Strategies San Jose just wrapped up last week, and the SES Conference Channel on You Tube has over 20 videos posted from the event.  Great stuff for all marketers.  One segment I really enjoyed was Brian Fetherstonhaugh, Chairman and CEO of Ogilvy One, discussion with John Mulligan of SEO-PR how external marketing agencies and in-house marketers have to be their own advocates to sell a search marketing strategy.  Those of us in the interactive agency world know all about the challenges that Brian mentions in hte interview.  Check it out:

Back in 2007, Yahoo’s MyYahoo startpage was the first to let its users check their email accounts, including GMail, via Yahoo Mail.  This was a smart move on their part because at the time it helped curb user attrition to Google via GMail dependence.  Google then followed suit last year and allowed Gmail users the chance to not only check other email accounts, but even send email through their Gmail interface as long as the other email account did not require SMTP authentication.

Google is using similar aggregation tactics, with its video search for example; it’s more efficient to search for You Tube or Meta Cafe videos on Google than on the sites themselves.  And with the new Google Wave project (beta), Google looks to be the central place to communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Their is no comparison with Yahoo for Google’s tools and application efforts, like Wave.  Google continues to  make their API code open source as a way to encourage the developer community to build more unique tools.  One recent example is Tweety,  which signs into your Twitter account and lets you fetch your Twitter timeline and post tweets from Google Wave.

If that wasn’t enough, Google Sites accounted for nearly 90 percent of the 21 percent growth in search query volume from the previous year on the five core search engines.  This accounts for much of  AdWords dominance in Paid Search.

So, what does Yahoo still do better than Google?  Here’s a roundup:

1. Yahoo Finance
2. Yahoo Answers : Q&A
3. Backlink Reporting via Yahoo Site Explorer: Even with the improvements in Google Webmaster Tools
4. Flickr : Photo Uploading & Sharing
5. Local Search : Still too tough to update Google Local Business Center listings
6. Entertainment
7. Privacy

Can you think of anything else Yahoo does better than Google?

PS:  As of 12 noon today, Yahoo Finance showed Google stock trading at $469.05.  A 51% increase YTD.  Yahoo is at $15.02, which is just a 20% increase YTD.