1.     Piracy is illegal and should be punished, but to what extent?

2.     Can the government force search engines to censor results and is that a good idea?

I’m going to weigh in on each but first I think it’s important to understand my stance on piracy. I’m against it. Period. I didn’t always have this opinion however. I was a high school senior when Napster went live. Believe it or not, in 1999 very few of my friends cared about the Internet, social networking was still getting together (in person) with friends, and I had honestly never heard of broadband. Even still, the lure of free music, downloaded a half hour at a time on my 28.8kbps modem (later upgraded to 56k), kept me up at night…all night. I couldn’t open my music factory during the day because every time the phone rang I’d get kicked off the web. See, kids (and the vast majority of adults) didn’t have cell phones either, so the phone rang a lot and my frustration would grow. I remember visiting friends at colleges that year and, while walking the floors of their T1 equipped dorms, it was clear that popularity was gained by having a computer, which gave instant access to any song of desire. CD’s were being burned by the minute and I loved every second of it.

My opinion only changed after I enrolled in school to study recording arts. It was preached to us that, if we wanted to work in the recording industry, stealing music was taking our income, our jobs, and our souls. While many people don’t agree with this, it is partially true. There isn’t as much opportunity in the recording industry as there once was and piracy did play a role in that among many other factors. I don’t work in the recording industry but many of my friends and former classmates do, so I continue to make it a point to buy my media. You won’t find a burned CD or DVD in my home.

So with the understanding that I’m against piracy; here is my opinion on point one from above. If it becomes a felony to pirate music then I would have been a felon for many years. I understand that now but I didn’t then and therefore, I’m not cool with it. You make mistakes when you are young, it’s part of growing up. Plus, where do you start the arrests? I mean, it’s no different than cheating on your taxes, everyone knows you don’t do it but yet many people still do. People are prosecuted for it every day but has it stopped anyone? A few high profile piracy cases aren’t going to stop piracy. The government knows that, the studios know that, and everyone who is stealing or providing the medium to steal media knows it too. I don’t think the answer is to punish end users with high crimes. I think it’s unfortunate that p2p networks are able to get away with it. I’m in the school of thought that feels the medium is the problem. If you can’t easily transact stolen media, you can’t easily steal the media right? I’m not here to solve the punishment issue but I will say that felonies for a 99-cent music track are not the answer.

The second issue is more involved. From an SEO standpoint, this can be broken out a little further. First, honest people are upset that piracy sites are outranking them and they want retribution. Here’s my answer to that: relevancy is still king. If there are more people searching for and linking to a torrent of a movie than there are people searching to know the leading actress of that movie, Google’s algorithm is correct in serving the results for the torrent. Just because your site is honest doesn’t mean it should be popular. Google’s job is to provide us with relevant results and some times those results are going to be piracy sites. Do I like it? No. But that leads me to the second half of this topic, censorship.

I believe strongly that the government should not step in here. I would like to see a shift in media related results but I think that decision should be left to the search engines to decide. I think it would be interesting if these decisions are made. For example, what if Google decides to axe piracy sites from their SERPs but Bing keeps them in? Will there be this huge shift in searches from Google to Bing? Will Bing follow suit or take a different stance? There are 185 million searches on Google for “torrent” each month according to their keyword tool. That’s not a small amount of traffic. This is going to be a hard decision but my point is, leave it up to the engines to make it. If they alienate a part of their customer base then it’s their decision.

I think it’s an interesting topic and that the implications of the decisions made surrounding it will reach beyond what we’re discussing here.  Yes, I do think something needs to change but I don’t have the answers. What do you think?

• Facebook was (probably) the most searched phrase on Google in 2010?
• Facebook.com was the most visited page in 2010, surpassing Google.com as the king of Web traffic?
• More and more small businesses are using Facebook as their second homepage?

While I typically cringe when hearing these blanket, pro-social media statements, there is one thing I have to say about them. They are true.

Facebook accounts for approximately 2.7% of the search volume on the Internet. While this might not be a significant number to those of us in the SEO business, you can bet 2.7% percent is important to those brand and community mangers out there. Thus, when ranking organically in the independent states of Twitter or Facebook, small businesses can expect a have a pleasant boost on their overall marketing goals.

This first part of this blog post will help you navigate the young, convoluted, and ever-changing Facebook search landscape, while the second part of the post will help you to coordinate a social SEO strategy that will complement your overall SEO marketing plan.

Social SEO 101: Facebook Auto-Complete vs. Facebook SERP

There are two primary ways to search in Facebook. The first is through AutoComplete, the prominent search bar displayed in the top, center of your Facebook page.

The second way to search on Facebook is the more traditional search engine results page with pre-determined search filters (pages, people, web results, events, etc.).

Auto-complete Explained

True to the Zuckerburg mentality that Facebook knows what you want more than you know what you want, type a search term into the AutoComplete box, hit enter, and Facebook directs you to the first result in its auto-complete form (and not to a full SERP like in Google). To get to a full search results page, it takes an additional click on the “See more results for…” button.

The auto-complete is the best place a brand or company can rank. The most important item to note, however, is that in Facebook, personalization factors carry more significance than search volume. In other words, the more your brand’s content is shared and the more your organizations Facebook page is liked, the better your chances to rank. VerticalMeasures.com does a nice job of summarizing how the AutoComplete box ranks:

That user’s name

Events that user has been invited to

Questions with the search term in it

A friend of the user with the search term in the name

A friend of a friend of the user with the search term in the name

Groups that the user has joined

Apps used by that user

Pages that user has liked

Pages related to that users interests

Pages that users friends have liked

Facebook SERP Layout

The Facebook SERP offers a number of variables you can limit your search by: People, pages, web results, events, groups, etc.

Facebook defaults to the “All Results” search variable, which intermingles apps, events, people, pages, and all other Facebook goodies together in one results page.

Like AutoComplete, there are a few bits of knowledge that can help your organization and brand rank in the more traditional Facebook search:

People, a.k.a friend or second degree friend with keyword in name

Pages with keyword in page name in tandem with total likes. Can outrank friend with keyword in name… sometimes…

Posts with keyword in posts (status updates, links shared, etc.)

Web results, fueled by Bing (important to note for the blurring of lines between social media and search)

Source: AimClearBlog.com

Imrpoving Ranks in Facebook Search

To optimize your company’s fan page for Facebook searches, content managers should concentrate on integrating target keywords into the following areas:

1. Fan Page Name – Keep the fan page name branded. Resist the urge to get clever by attempting to integrate a keyword in fan page name as this cleverness could hurt your branded social search rankings in the long-term.
2. Vanity URL – Similar to the fan page name, keep your vanity URL branded. Also, claim your company’s vanity page URL as soon as possible. Please note: It takes 25 page likes for Facebook to allow the vanity URL for fan pages.
3. Keyword Driven Info Page and About Box – The info page tab and the about box are probably the most important places on your organization’s Facebook fan page to integrate target keywords. On the info page, be consistent with corporate branding for your organization’s products and services.
4. Keyword Driven Status Updates – Adding target keywords to your status updates won’t only add to page relevancy with your current fans, but will also aid in your ranking results for real time search. Additionally, status updates are searchable in the traditional Facebook SERP as far back as 30 days. Finally, inserting keywords here may also be handy for your Twitter account if you happen to duplicate posts between a Facebook and a Twitter account.
5. FBML Pages – Much like the Facebook info tab, you can add the FBML application to include more keywords on your fan page. Treat these tabs as if you were writing web copy for a company website. For example, keywords can be integrated into custom tabs that promote a contest, share a company’s schedule of events, or even a tab dedicated to a company’s history.
6. Photo and Video Descriptions – Optimize all of your online multimedia content with your target keywords in mind. Following a general multimedia search engine optimization strategy across all of your marketing channels should be a primary SEO goal.
7. Adjust Privacy Setting – If you are an individual, you might want to put your Facebook page on lockdown from the general public. However, if you are a company, I suggest opening your page and content up to everyone.
8. Facebook Likes – Promote giveways and contests, ask questions and conduct polls, and engage with your audience as authentically as you can. Basically, do everything possible to increase the number of likes on your fan page. Consider every like a vote to your page’s authority.

Hopefully, this will stand as a starter guide for how the internal Facebook search algorithm works. In addition, the 8 steps above should guide you through the basic social SEO marketing strategies. For a more comprehensive guide to all things Facebook SEO and Ranking, check out aimClear’s study on Facebook’s internal search. AimClear has provided a great resource for us SEO specialists just beginning to dabble in the social SEO realm. Kudos!

In a nutshell, personalized search is Google’s attempt to customize the search engine experience to the user so as to give the most relevant results back to the searcher. It does this in two ways, differentiated by whether or not the user has signed up for a Google account. The first way, after signing up for a Google account and logging in, is allowing the user to allow Google to keep track of what sites the user visits and also what search queries the user enters. Based on these preferences, Google then tailors results on SERPs based upon the user’s history in relation to their search query. Google allows the user to edit their history via access to their Google account, and also allows them to opt out of having their SERPs personalized (meaning an end to Google’s tracking). The other way that Google personalizes SERPs pertains to people who haven’t signed up for a Google account. In this case, Google takes into account the web history of the last 180 days through using a cookie, and displays customized results to that local computer’s history. So, Google is not exactly giving personal results tailored to the individual user, but to anyone who has used that computer in the past 180 days. Despite this, users and non-users alike can decide to opt out of Google accessing their previous history.

As previously mentioned, Google is “kind of a big deal,” so when they come out with something new, the ripples can be felt all over the digital world. So, as personalization has now come to the forefront of what is deemed “relevant” for a user’s experience, other sites have followed suit, particularly news media sites. This is all well and good, but if you heavily account for a user’s preferences and most visited sites in deciding what to show in SERPs, how do they expand their tastes and find new sites that may still interest them? How do users get diverse search results that may help them better understand what they were looking for in their search query? And important for those of us in the SEO business, how do we reach people using Google if our client/company doesn’t fall within one of the user’s preferential “interests” as defined by Google? It seems as though, on first inspection, that this may hurt SEO efforts and limit serendipitous results in regards to search queries. So how to combat this? One answer, shown through another media outlet that is suffering from personalized search results, is social media.

Online news sites have found that around 75 % of people get news from someone else via e-mail or social media, and over half of them (52 %) forward it on to their contacts. In addition, a survey conducted by NPR found that 74.6 % of their Facebook fans stated that Facebook was a “major way in which they receive news and information.” In addition, this same survey (included on the link above), 72.3 % of those surveyed expect their friends to send them links to interesting news stories. So what does this mean? News media consumption is often based on a user’s preferences, and in some cases certain online news sources have begun collecting user preferences in order to show more “relevant” stories to their users, much like Google personalized search. And in order to get more news out to people outside of their usual readership, many of these news sites have begun expanding into Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. How better to expand a following and gain more readers than to give your audience a great bit of news through such an easily transmitted channel such as Facebook, and then watch as your news spreads to users who had never even considered your site as a source. The analogy between those of us in SEO trying to up our traffic while dealing with Google personalized search, and the various news media outlets competing with a user’s preferences is fairly clear, and the answer easy to understand and implement—use social media. Get your client/company’s name out there on the social channels by giving something to be spread by your followers. What you decide to use (a blog post, an ad, a new video, really anything that is good “bait” much in the same way as most types of link bait) is up to you and your client/company, but the end result should help you get over any lack of traffic you may perceive as a result of Google personalized search.

So, even though personalized search may affect or change certain SEO tactics, there are still many that will go unaffected, like utilizing social media. And, if you are ever looking for new strategies, social media is always a good avenue to test. As seen in another industry that is often affected by user preferences (be it directly through preference-based reporting or just by any user’s inherent preference), it can be a powerful tool when utilized correctly to help overcome user preferences and add a certain amount of “serendipity” back into the process of search.

Regardless of your device, you’ll need to download the Google app. For iPhone, it’s a simple matter of searching Google on the app store and downloading the app. I deleted my app and reinstalled it today and was greeted with an opening tutorial, specific to Goggles. This makes it easy to implement upon first downloading. Unfortunately, I’m not that familiar with the android operating system but I’d imagine it’s a very similar process. You can also have the download link sent to your phone by entering your mobile phone number through the Goggles website on a standard browser. When I first learned about Goggles about a month ago the process of getting it to work on my phone wasn’t exactly clear. The “send Goggles to iPhone” link wasn’t working. Fortunately it is now but this is a process you can avoid by simply downloading the app.

So getting the app is simple enough and honestly using it is just as easy. The basic premise of the app is that you take pictures with your phone and the images are translated into search results. The app breaks these functions into a few categories that I’ll break down individually:

Text – The text translator can be particularly useful for international travelers. I haven’t found an application for it here in the states but I could see myself pulling it out for a quick translation. You might find yourself in a situation where you need a fast translation and typing a paragraph in a foreign language might not sound like a great idea. Simply open the app and snap a photo and you’ll have a decent translation in a few seconds.

Landmarks – This is another feature I feel is exceptionally useful while traveling. I’m the type of person that actually likes to learn a thing or two about the landmarks I’m visiting while site seeing but I’m not the type to pay for or even wait in line for a guided tour. If you’re out exploring a new city, simply snapping a photo of an unknown landmark can provide you instant and relevant Google results.  Not too shabby of a tool if you ask me.

Books – This can be tremendously useful if you’re an avid reader. I generally get my book recommendations from friends and usually by being a little nosy on their book shelves. In the event you find something you’re interested in, you can simply snap a picture and have all of the information surrounding the book readily available on your phone. In addition to providing author, title, publisher, ISBN number, and publishing date, you’ll also have an image of the book, standard Google results surrounding it, and a direct link to Google shopping results. I liken this feature as the book version of Shazam (the popular app that recognizes songs through a few seconds of audio sampling). I use them both and without them, I’d never remember any of my book recommendations or random songs I hear on the radio.

Contact Info – This again is a tremendously usable feature. The app is able to easily recognize contact information from letterhead or business cards and translate it directly into your phone contacts. This is particularly useful for business contacts. I know I can get a little lazy when entering all the information – things that could be useful like business names or address (which you always tend to need when you aren’t in front of your computer) are automatically generated for you with a simple image capture.

Artwork – This function goes hand-in-hand with the landmarks functionality. If it’s something that is rather well known and has a decent amount of photographed history on the web, you can feel fairly certain that Goggles will recognize the image and deliver search results. I tried this out on a photographic print I have hanging on a wall. While Goggles wasn’t able to tell me the photographer, it did tell me where I purchased this print, which happened to be Ikea. I was more impressed by this then if they had told me the lens and camera body the photo was shot with.

Wine – The wine tool is another one of those simple tools that can be useful in a pinch. Maybe you’re out to dinner and have a great wine pairing you want to remember or at a friends and are drink a sensible glass you want to purchase on your own. A simple snap of the label will give you all the info you need to add that bottle to your cellar. A little known fact about Southern Indiana is that we have a number of fantastic local wineries. These are small obscure bottles and Goggles was able to identify every local bottle we have in our rack. My friend Mike who I mentioned earlier just got back from New York and mentioned he used the app a few times to find someplace local to buy some wine they had with dinner and that it worked like a charm. Bonus feature is that it works for Beer too!

Logos – This is another obvious one but Goggles is pretty capable of picking out brands. If there is a logo you want to commit to memory, Goggles can handle it.

So these are the core functions that Goggles has been advertising from the start. Today they announced some new and added functionality. Some of these added features I’ll admit aren’t the greatest. Barcode reading for example works but isn’t as advanced as some of the dedicated barcode readers. It’ll tell you what the product is and if you can shop for it online, it’ll provide some shopping results but (at least from the codes I scanned) doesn’t provide the in depth cost comparison analysis that I’ve come to expect from the dedicated apps. Google also claims that Goggles is doing a better job at recognizing print ads. I tested this on the Louis Vuitton ad that features Bono and while it did recognize the ad, I wasn’t sure what the point is. I mean, I knew it was Louis Vuitton by the ad, why did I need an app to tell me so?

Finally, the most useless, in my opinion, function. Google Goggles solves soduku puzzles. While I admit it shows the power of the software, I’m not a soduku guy and even if I was isn’t using a robot to solve your puzzle cheating?

I’ve been using this app for about a month now and while I don’t find a use for it on a daily basis, it has come in handy time and time again. It’s good to know that Google is committed to making it better and I think this technology only has room to grow. It’s too bad you have to open an app to actually make use of it. I think it would be even more powerful if it was built into our mobile browsers. Let me know what you think about Goggles. Have you been using it? Do you think it’s here to stay?

Local Search

This year, the vastness of the Internet has reminded us that it still is, after all, a small world.  Local search results and ad listings have risen in importance to searchers, thanks in large part to the development of smart phones and other platforms with fully-functional browsers and strong, accessible wireless connections.  The major search engines have responded by launching tools and programs that explicitly promote local businesses and services: standouts include Google’s Places, Facebook Places, Localeze, Info USA, and Acxion.  Less obvious but no less important has been a noticeable change in algorithms that favor local results and ads over others, based on a user’s IP address, language settings, and past history.   Truly, 2010 was a big year for local, and as the Internet continues to become increasingly integrated into everyday life, it is almost a certainty that we will see this local trend continue in 2011.

Google Instant

“SEO is dead.” Google Instant makes SEO irrelevant. Google Instant makes SEO dead-on relevant. These are just some of the headlines that created a stir in the SEO community when Google Instant was launched on September 8, 2010. The new search enhancement tool shows results as you enter a query, allowing users to find the information they need much faster than ever before. Two months later the company launched Google Instant Previews, just another step on its never-ending quest towards instant search. This tool provides searchers with a snapshot of each website on the Google results page. Both Google Instant and Google Instant Previews will impact SEO but exactly how is still up for debate. We look forward to finding out more about the effects of these tools in the New Year.

YouTube

YouTube isn’t exactly “traditional” in terms of search, but it is the second most used search engine behind Google.  This is pretty convenient for Google, as they own YouTube.  Video Search Engine Optimization continues to become more important as more users realize they can use YouTube as a source of useful and/or tutorial information.  For some industries, it’s easier to rank well on the SERP with an online video strategy.   Video SEO offers potential benefits for branding, and the competition for search results when compared to organic listings are typically much lower.

As well as some of our expectations for SEO in 2011:

Facebook Search Engine

The debate began earlier in 2010, but there are still players on both sides of the table taking sides – will Facebook roll out their own search engine that will take Google head on? Will it happen in 2011? Our prediction is that Facebook is going to continue to become a larger player and will continue to refine its integration with search in the coming year. Will it take over Google? Probably not in 2011 but it is something to keep a close eye on.

Google Goggles

Google attempted to make search even faster and easier with the creation of Google Goggles. Instead of typing or speaking your search, you can simply take pictures of objects you’d like more information about. Currently, Google Goggles works well for landmarks, works of art, logos, contact information, products, barcodes and QR codes. Since text falls into this category, for example, if you are in another country and don’t know the language you can take a picture of an object and Google Goggles will translate the words or symbols for you. This cutting edge visual search application is currently only available for iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 devices through the Google Mobile App, as well as Android devices that are running Android 1.6 and above. This visual search app is bound to be a valuable resource once the final kinks are worked out.

Social and Search Becoming One

Location, Location, Location … and don’t forget location. Who doesn’t love a great local deal? Sure, Foursquare and Gowalla had their time in the spotlight in 2010, but localized marketing deals will go the way of Groupon and Facebook in 2011 (and of course, don’t forget about Living Social, which was recently funded by Amazon).  Groupon will be the big winner in 2011, and we’re excited to see how the recently unveiled merchant store will stimulate their growth.

Location based technologies, such as Facebook Places and Google Hotpot (Google’s Yelp), will also be interesting to watch as marketers harness the power in local mobile apps. Facebook Places will expand in marketing usage and may overwhelm the smaller competitor Foursquare. On the other hand, Google Hotpot is Google’s best chance at entering the social arena right now as Google Places, Google Maps, and the Android allow Google to easily build a niche in the mobile phone consumer market.

Trust Expands

In November 2010, the New York Times very publicly questioned Google’s search algorithm and results page after an Internet company used cyber bullying, negative customer reviews, and bad publicity to increase their search ranks. For the company, the negative marketing and SEO tactics seemed to work, but for Google, it was a blemish on their reputation.

In 2011, trust in search will expand to include a searcher’s social graph. A searcher’s social graph will more significantly influence purchasing decisions and will play a powerful part in both search engine and referral visitor traffic. What your friends like on Facebook and Twitter influence are already starting to have influence on search algorithms, but more importantly, the ability for search engines to show real-time referrals and recommendations from friends will help to reinforce trust in the search results.

What were some of your favorite changes in 2010? How do you think SEO will evolve in the coming year? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

I like to break things down by having two lenses:

Lens 1. User habits of technology in the past

Lens 2. User trends that aren’t fads

These two lenses focus an image of what the future could be like as we point this two-lens telescope toward different industries. If we point the telescope at websites, we see certain trends that we might have to continue to keep an eye on.

With these two lenses we can look at an industry or activity and realize that there are 3 values associated with everything we do and they are either static (fixed) or dynamic (mobile). I classify these into three groups:

• Location – Where you are physically on the planet
• Event – What you experience at that moment in time
• Information – What is available to learn at the moment

For instance, an amusement part is a static location. There is only one Silver Dollar City and it is in Branson, MO. The ride “Fire in the Hole” is a static event. Everyone on that ride will see the train speeding toward them. Outside the ride are the funny “Wanted” signs that give the park character. If two people go to the park and ride the ride in two different years, they can both speak about the ride as if they were both there at the same time. Conversely, if Silver Dollar City had QR codes around the park that contained parts of a Old West Mystery to solve and “Fire in the Hole” contained a large twist to the story midway through the ride, two people could have an entirely different experience though they were at the same park and on the same ride.

Here is a quick rendition of different amalgamations of static and dynamic values with a possible example of what
it is in actual execution.

Static Location – Static Event – Static Information = Reading a funny sign in front of a ride at an amusement park, Radio, TV, Print
Static Location – Static Event – Dynamic Information = QR Codes, Coupons mailed to you, Newsletters
Static Location – Dynamic Event – Static Information = A buffet, a brochure rack
Dynamic Location – Static Event – Static Information = Streaming of Live Concert or news event
Static Location – Dynamic Event – Dynamic Information = Interactive Location Activities (Check-ins)
Dynamic Location – Dynamic Event – Static Information = Billboards, Road signs, Search Engine Results
Dynamic Location – Static Event – Dynamic Information = Facebook/Twitter Stream, Personalized Search
Dynamic Location – Dynamic Event – Dynamic Information = Mobile Apps, Web Apps

Not a complete list by any means, but take our telescope of where we were (static) and what is happening now (dynamic) and you can see where we are going. The 2nd lens says we are becoming more dynamic, but the 1st lens shows us that we won’t quickly abandon static values. Businesses still want people to go somewhere (to a store, to an event, to a wedding, to a party)

Personalized search is where SEO lies for now. Personalized search serves groups of people searching for a Topic or Item, but will get there through different devices with different results based on factors defining the user (location, search behavior).

A quick search on some local businesses andyou will find stores that still don’t have a website. In the next couple years these stores could get a mobile app before a website – skipping a whole genre of mass communication. This isn’t a great leap to imagine since the dot com craze was about circumventing radio, tv and print. If businesses want to make every experience as dynamic as possible, the app will be the key.

How do you get the app to the people? By expanding SEO efforts to incorporate a brand to wherever it would make sense to be in – even at a buffet.

1. Lack of Technology Adoption – There are start-ups left and right trying to get local information into our digital fingertips, but if no one adopts their hub of info, it will be all for naught. The yellow page directories have had decades upon decades to seer into our culture their need. The death of the printed book won’t be until the last generation that picked up a yellow page book up dies off. In my experience, the yellow pages seem to have a niche in a couple industries. The service industry (A/C, Plumbing, Auto) and Lawyers. It’s rare to find a non-chain service company with it’s own website though Google’s Place Pages are trying to remedy that.

Where the group of non-technology adapters in business meets the non-technology adapters in homes, you’ll find the yellow pages printed book.

2. Demographic targeting – I may have fully integrated my life with my tablet computer, but if the only online option for a service I need locally seems undesirable, I finally find myself in 3rd party listings, or even the book itself. I’m in a demographic that still knows what the book is for and what is in it. The option exists for me. Though the demographic of the 60+ may be the majority of the yellow page book audience, it doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities. If you are in the service industry and you want to gain the trust of the elderly couple that has movable income, their eyes will be on traditional media. Don’t drop it, but measure it appropriately. For me it has already manifested itself this way:

1. A 75-year-old woman hears an ad on the radio and comes away with the name of the plumbing company.
2. The woman calls the company for service
3. The company asks how they found them
4. The woman says “yellow pages.”

A. A 38 year old man hears the same ad and calls
B. The company asks how they found them
C. The man says “the Internet.”

The Result: Next year’s budget is then cut for radio to help pay the growing costs of having yellow page ads while the Internet seems to be doing just fine.  Oops.

If you are looking to dominate quickly, the quick and easy paths are the most expensive; full-page or two-page spreads for yellow pages and PPC campaigns for search engines. Managed poorly, and you waste a lot of money either way. If yellow pages are in your company’s marketing still, do your company a favor and put a separate phone number in the ads. If you can tell your sales apart generated by a web presence versus a yellow page presence, you will be able to see how your target demographic finds you.

At an in-office event Tuesday, September 14th, Twitter displayed to a select few the new Twitter.com interface. According to the Twitter blog, users will will get access to the new interface, “over the next few several weeks.”

Several sites are reporting the many new features. There are a features that are very much worth noting:

• “Infinite Scroll”
• Two-panel display
• Embedded videos / photos – including full galleries from Flickr.

All these features provide a user experience in which the user doesn’t have to leave the site or perform excessive clicks in order to use it. Only time will tell Twitter, give me access to speed the time up.

During the meeting, Twitter CEO Evan WIlliams (great Bourbon, by the way) pointed out that Twitter.com is the #1 way Twitter users access the service. A staggering 78%.

There’s two things to consider before blindly believing in the primrose claim:

Logging in – Users have to log into Twitter.com in order to use Twitter’s ReTweet button. The stat also doesn’t account for the ways in which people send / receive tweets. If they’re like me, they don’t typically use Twitter.com for anything else but checking twitter lists.

Hootsuite and Tweetdeck - The biggest drawback in using Twitter.com is that users can only view one list at a time. With Hootsuite’s tabbed-browsing and multiple list features, Twitter.com is a cosmetic application at best. So if the 78% stat is true…that’s sad.

But here’s the thing:

If Twitter.com is truly that active in spite of its limited usability. imagine what it can be like when users don’t have to leave the site to check out most of the really, really good content.

User time on site will go up.
Pages per visit will increase.
The need to visit other sites will decrease.

But Twitter wasn’t able to increase the number of hours in a week so something will have to be sacrificed.

Is it Yahoo!? In the last week, too many thousands of posts were written about Bing passing Yahoo! as the second most-visited search engine.

Is it Bing? It could be a tough decision for loyal fans.

Perhaps it’s Facebook.

Many people syndicate their message. With Twitter.com’s newfound ability to access the content off these messages (at least from their laptop), Twitter’s become more of a direct competitor.

Only Compete.com will be able to tell us.

And as for why I was on Twitter.com tonight…I kept hoping people Twitter would give me access to the new platform.

With its bold letters, you quickly see what is coming up right at you, but with it comes the suggestion of one thing over another thing. For example: if I type in “pheonix” (yes, I misspelled it on purpose) I get Phoenix, Phoenix hill tavern, phoenix arms, phoenix band in Google Suggest and Google Instant brings me the highest results for that one word SO FAR.

My first questions as an SEO specialist is “Phoenix Hill Tavern?” Where is that? What is it? Where are they? Are they in Phoenix? Why Phoenix hill tavern and not Phoenix Avenue Bar? Then I found that Phoenix Hill is an Event Place in Louisville, KY which is now got me wondering how close these suggestions are being made around my location.

I don’t need to find out if it is because you might as well go ahead and believe it does.

What does it actually mean?

The power of suggestion in psychology is a theory that you can get someone to do something that they may have not done in the first place. If it’s rejected by the scientific community, the Advertising world would readily agree and scooch it’s own research findings under the table.  Compound the fact that in 2001, 100 million Americans searched online for health material was incomplete or contradictory.

So people are going online for answers and if Google Suggestion is tied to the number of searches as a whole in their database, then we are in one huge popular answer contest. Keep multiplying this over and over again, and if the pages brought up in Google Instant reflect the best optimization of the keywords you type in the best way, Google Suggest will suggest additional popular words - something you may or may not have interest in at all.

Let’s see how this could play out with a quick look at steps for using suggestive behavior located at this link.

1. “Have a clear picture of what it is you want to suggest.”
For this example, I’ll want to communicate a business aptly named “Local Service”

2. “Tell the person you want to encourage why suggestive behavior is needed. The person needs to hear the “why” in a positive way.”
This involves campaigns of encouraging Local companies as a whole for filling out their Place Page.

3. Make whatever you want suggested personal. In order to be successful in your desire to encourage suggestive behavior the “why” must correlate with your own personal experience.
This could be interpreted as Google being the only search engine you use or the engine used most by all.

4. Enforce and encourage suggestive behavior. Reinforcement is the key to success. Continuous conversation about the “why” will make your ability to encourage suggestive behavior easier.
This could translate into finding a term associated with your keyword popping up. For instance, I type “Local Company” and “Local Company Reviews” pops up. Hmmm. Does that mean more people are reading online reviews?

5. Assess the progress of your encouragement. As will any attempt to suggest a change in behavior, there needs to be assessment. Always have a plan B just in case.
If my basis is now reading reviews of the Local Service Company, rather than list of skills, guarantees and other value items, I’m now looking for reviews for this local company. Does Google Instant have reviews of the local company come up? If not, where are they? Oh wait… #6

6. Investigate and intervene if necessary. In order to encourage suggestive behavior, you need to be aware of your plan’s progress. If the first way you choose to encourage suggestive behavior does not work, alter your course.
“Ah! Google Places has reviews of ‘Local Service!’”

This is just a small example of how a suggestion that you did not type would impact your search habit. You may have not been seeking the online reviews, but that seemed important to someone else.

Using Google Suggest to feed Google Instant for SEO Purposes

So if Google Suggest is a springboard, Google instant becomes the landing pad. Now you can see what people as a majority might be looking
for. Take a product or service your provide and see what happens when you type:

What does “keyword”
who does “keyword”
where is “keyword”
why is “keyword”
how is “keyword”
What is filled in afterward might be an interesting find!

“Did you see that Google Instant came out today?” he asked.

“What’s that?”

Douglas pulled up a Google search and started to type in a few words.

“Oh, wow,” I said, “Where was that today when I needed it?”

Among the updates Google has made to their offering:

• Gmail Priority Inbox - which I’d say, “Office has done this forever,” but then I remember Gmail is free.
• Google Tags - Something I need to play more with.
• Google Adwords Keyword Research Local Search Volume Stats Tweak (maybe)

Google Instant might be the most helpful SEO tool Google’s released in a long, long time.

What is Google Instant?

Google Instant is a feature that shows the page 1 listings for the keyword as you type them. And changes the results as the keywords change.

Check out the video:

Why Is This Cool?

How many times do you type in a query, hit the enter button, not like the results, go back, type in another query, hit the enter button…Yeah. What this does is allows you to play with search queries and “try before you buy.”

Why Is This Important?

1) How people search will change – Instead of typing in a phrase, clicking the enter button and seeing what appears, searchers can craft their phrases as they go. If they get a few words deep and they don’t like what’s appearing, they can backspace and go again. Long tails were already increasing in possibility. Something tells me keyword combination are going to start becoming more serial-based and descriptive.

For example: I found myself playing Charades with the SERPS when I first searched using Google Instant.
“Band Southern Rock James Brown sound.”
“Band James Brown sound Lollapapooza.”
“This band sounded like James Brown and Southern Rock at Lollapalooza.”

Then I realized, “Lollapalooza 2009 band list.” And finally found the band I was looking for.

Black Joe Lewis & the HoneyBears – by the way, great stuff!

2) Easier to show the customer the dynamic nature of search engines – ever try to explain to a client that search engines have SERPs for every keyword phrase? It doesn’t always go over so well. With Google Instant, you’ll be able to start typing in a keyword, and as you take that keyword into a keyword phrase, then to a long tail keyword, the client can see how the results shift. Having that type of instant update to the SERPs is going to be like an animated video that you’ll be able to show your customers when explaining how SEO works.

3) Cutting down the work time – on the Google Instant page, Google claims that searches will be cut by “2-5 seconds per search,” with the help of Instant. I believe it.

If you haven’t taken Google Instant out for a spin. Do so. It’s not perfect, yet. And you’ll come up with search phrases that Google will be clueless on. It happens. But after playing with it, I believe you’ll find that if Bing can claim to be “The Decision Engine,” then Google can boast that they’ve become “The Collaboration Engine.”

Sadly, I think “Collaboration Engine” is patented.  Only one way to find out…

Search two with Google Instant is underway…

Speaking of musical great stuff, check out this demonstration Google did using Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues