UPDATED January 13th: this article is being updated regularly 

Haven’t we Seen this For a While Now?

This may sound similar to what you have seen over the past while where certain results had a profile shot of a friend next to them because your friend had recently given it a social nod (liked, +1′d, etc.) but this is far more intense. The new additions are opt-out only and include any of the following content showing in results if it is relevant: images, video, and websites. In addition, these results can also include semi-private and private content such as content shared with you via a limited circle in Google Plus or directly from someone in your network; note that does not mean this is visible to anyone else on Google so don’t get freaked about privacy unless you plan on leaving your browser logged in to your Google profile.

Here is the official (and rather cool) video Google used to demonstrate the functionality all Google users will soon see:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The biggest and most alarming takeaway here is that the only social content found within these socialized search results is that of Google Plus! That’s right, Google did not include one iota of content from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or any other social platform. Their excuse is painfully simple and transparent; the others won’t let them spider their content to that degree (the simple part) and Google is whacking them over the head for it (the transparent part). Welcome to a classic case of cause and effect except in this case Google has tread heavily on dangerous ground.

So, based on this news did you pick up how Google just dropped its pants for its competitors? The outright antitrust implications of Google integrating its own social network into supposedly neutral search results without catering to the competition – the pants loosen. The full bare arse is revealed when Google made this new functionality opt-out by default; in other words you are in whether you like it or not until you manually remove yourself. This, in my opinion is the dumbest move imaginable and has the social industry quickly aiming at Google’s privates.

Here are a few examples of the rush of heated headlines spurned by this news:

• Twitter Really, Really Hates Google’s New Google+ Integration by Jason Kincaid at Tech Crunch
• Twitter: Google+ Integration In Google Search Is “Bad” For Everyone by Matt McGee, Marketing Land
• “Search, Plus Your World As Long as it is Our World” by John Battelle
• “Twitter Dumps on Google for Pushing Google+ in Search” by Liz Gannes of AllThingsDigital
• Many more are found here (this link will show the latest) courtesy of TechMeme

What Google Could Have Done to Minimize Anti-Trust Exposure

I don’t understand when a company willingly puts itself in the path of legal harm which Google clearly has done by not including its competitors in Search Plus; perhaps it is just another clear example of corporations having too much money to care. At any rate, I would have done one or both of the following options to minimize exposure:

1. Included the content that Google does have access to from the other social platforms. For example, they can index public information from any of the platforms; there is a lot to be had and we see it often in everyday searches on Google. By adding this information they would have the ability to say, “well we would love to include more but we need to create better relationships with each company to get more of that data.” At least that position would have held more water than simply not trying which opens a downright palatial foothold for an antitrust lawsuit.
2. Not everyone has a Google Profile but the advantages of having one is made abundantly clear if you want to take advantage of Google’s vast array of free applications. Since Google’s entire future strategy relies critically upon pushing Google Profiles it just makes sense to make Search Plus a very bold opt-in option when signing up.  And for those who already have a Profile, just use ads to push the benefits of Search Plus and make it dirt simple to enable the option. Chances are that many will take the option and by going this route Google is free and clear of antitrust; at least I think so based on my admittedly puny knowledge of law.

Living With Google Search Plus

One key request I have for Google: there needs to be a way to specify which circles I want to appear in results – that way I and fellow Google Plus users can create and monitor noisier circles within Google Plus without polluting our Search Plus results.

So what do you think? Should Google have rolled this out differently to not offend any of the social platforms or do you figure (as I do with some inner conflict) the other social platforms can shut their collective whining pie holes for not being more open with their data in the first place?

UPDATE #1 (Jan 12): Google Search Plus the World is provoking a lot of discussion so here are some related articles to check out that have been released since this article was posted:

Google Search Plus Your World – Cause and Effect (updated Jan 13) is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Micro Searching

Micro searching is a great way of connecting and reaching out across social media to increase your audience. These searches include different twists on the classic search and each of which will be explained individually.

Geo- Targeting: Being able to locate people and updates which have been sent within an “X mile radius” really does mean you can restrict your searches to only the most relevant distances and topics for you. Fantastic if you are holding an event in a town and want to get locals involved or if you have a product that you need local people to buy or use. MarketMeSuite is social media dashboard which lets you have all of your social network accounts in one place. And, most importantly, lets you target your tweet searches to location and using specific words using a feature called “Reply Campaigns”. You can target within 1000 miles of a specific location. All you have to do is type in either the city, county, zip code, postal code to get location of your choice. The keyword selection also means you can target the words that you feel will be most used in your niche topic.

Keyword Searching: Tools like MarketMeSuite also allow you to do a simply generic keyword search rather than just a place and a specific niche. Keyword following is a tool that allows you to use our smart algorithm to suggest real people  -not automated bots, tweeting, or spammers – all based on the keyword and language you enter. This brings in all tweets from world wide so you can find a selection of people to follow and interact with. It’s always useful to be known in as many places as possible to get your business to expand. It is beneficial because you have 100% control over what you search for and who you interact with from the results. Whether you just tweet them or follow them, it’s a great way increasing your online presence and getting your product noticed by the masses!

The Importance Of Social Search is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

What is Foursquare’s new “Save” button for and how does it work?

Foursquare’s new save button is meant for websites of businesses with physical locations (such as shops, restaurants, tourist activities, etc. ) in order to allow online users to add the location to their queue of places to visit next time they are in that geographic area. The idea is quite brilliant and I predict it will have the necessary kick to move Foursquare into bigger leagues sooner than later. This positive outlook for Foursquare is greatly improved from my impression of the service (which I was an early adopter of) over the past while; which has been lackluster at best since Facebook and Google launched similar check-in services.

A quick sideline: what is Foursquare? You would be easily forgiven for not knowing much if anything about this company because it has largely been an app-driven service for smartphones. Here is a bit of background from their About Page:

Foursquare is a location-based mobile platform that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. By “checking in” via a smartphone app or SMS, users share their location with friends while collecting points and virtual badges. Foursquare guides real-world experiences by allowing users to bookmark information about venues that they want to visit and surfacing relevant suggestions about nearby venues. Merchants and brands leverage the foursquare platform by utilizing a wide set of tools to obtain, engage, and retain customers and audiences.

What is the advantage of the Foursquare Save button for businesses?

Foursquare explains this best in their news release:

When readers use the ‘save to foursquare’ button, the saved places will show up in their foursquare app with your branding, along with a link back to the original article on your site. Find out how to add the button to your site here.

In addition to this, consider that Foursquare’s button is the perfect compliment for your physical business if it tends to convert visitors to customers better in-person because it will increase the likelihood your physical location will get visits from those who found your business online. Taking this a step further, in my opinion Foursquare is setting itself up nicely as the social media leader of converting online traffic into offline business which means this button will be a MUST for all bricks & mortar establishments with an online presence.

Here is an example of the button on a profile shown on New York Magazine’s website:

This is a 12 second clip showing the button in action (I have no idea why Foursquare didn’t jazz this up a bit):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here are some sites who already have the Foursquare button in-place: Time Out Boston, CBS’s list of “The Best Burgers in New York”,  Frommer’s Travel.

The Foursquare Save Button Arrives to Improve Sales Offline is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Happy American Thanksgiving!! is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

On average, people spend 69 minutes on a session; that’s more than three times the average time on Facebook! What’s most interesting is the longevity of a link on the site. The average half-life is exponentially larger than Twitter (2.8 hours) and Facebook (3.2 hours) at an astonishing 400 hours.The reason behind this is Twitter and Facebook get bombarded with new information on a streaming basis where the old stuff gets pushed to the bottom and if you aren’t glued to the site all day, posts will get missed. However, content on StumbleUpon, gets categorized so when a new viewer wants to view information in a particular category, the page will show up. And if it is “liked” by its viewers, it’ll show up even more.

StumbleUpon offers advertising which is looking more and more desirable as the above stats continue to improve. By purchasing a sponsored stumble, advertisers can get their webpage to appear more often in the stumble cycle. Although a sponsored stumble guarantees a certain number of page views, the higher rated your ad is, the more likely it is to be stumbled upon.  StumbleUpon delivers the right audience to your site by allowing you to target the page by category, location, demographic, and device.  They also give you access to a report on how many people saw your site, and how many voted your page up and down.  Advertising is relatively cheap with a standard price of $0.10 per visit and you don’t actually need to create an ad, just a page to send people to.

Some have voiced their concerns in the past about advertising with StumbleUpon, or even submitting their blog posts because the site will most likely increase your bounce rate. People are concerned that if they received an influx in traffic generating a high bounce rate, Google will discredit their site and it will affect their rankings. After discussing this with our SEO specialists I know this is false but even without their help I do know Google isn’t stupid . Even if Google could detect the bounces it has a pretty clear idea of what StumbleUpon is and how it works; it’s a discovery engine built to show you things you may not have otherwise ‘discovered.” It’s expected your bounce rate will increase. And surprisingly, according to StumbleUpon, the average stumble page view lasts 14 seconds longer than the average web page view (not bad).  I wouldn’t let this probability dissuade you in the least.

My advice to you, look into pursuing StumbleUpon advertising or ask for help. It’s affordable, unique, and could generate a mass amount of exposure for your website with the right content.

Lastly: Here is a great infographic from StumbleUpon illustrating the statistics I noted above.

Could StumbleUpon Advertising be an Overlooked Treasure? is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

First consider what we know:

1. Google is taking into account the personal blocking data (the block site option in results) from users that have a long and trusted profile; confirmed by Matt Cutts in his September 21st Q&A (the first answer on the linked page).
2. Right now, if you have a highly trusted profile and you have authorship markup (rel=author) on your articles/copy you will get representation in Google search results – by having your photo show up next to the article.
3. In order for this markup to work you need to have a Google Profile and it must be correctly associated with the sites you write on and your author page on the site has to connect back (a few hoops are necessary) to your Google Profile to finalize the association.
4. Google is integrating Plus into most (if not all) of their products – this was confirmed by Vic Gundrota on a recent Web Summit 2.0 interview with him and Sergey Brin.
5. In order to be on Google Plus you have to have a Google Profile.
6. Your Google Profile prompts you to connect all of your social profiles so Google knows your social fingerprint and can highlight content in search results that your friends have socially shared/liked.
7. Links are an important part of Google’s algorithms but they are heavily gamed and likely cause the majority of spam found in Google’s results.
8. If Google sees that others like your content then it has a better chance of appearing at the top of relevant searches.

Next, let’s connect a few dots and make some educated assumptions:

1. If your content is shared extensively on social networks, especially Plus, and you have rel=”author” (AKA authorship markup), Google will credit your profile with more trust.
2. If someone links to your article or otherwise shares it, Google can see the authorship markup and will consider crediting your Google Profile – depending on the quality of person linking/sharing the article.
3. Links are a trust indicator and Google Profiles will be a trust indicator with a tougher signal to fake.
4. By creating content regularly that is highly shared and signed with your rel=”author” you will build greater trust for your Google Profile.
5. The more trust & credibility you have with Google, the better chance your content will have of appearing in the top search results.

My Conclusion
Build your Google Profile because there are many reasons to believe it will assist the ranking success of content you write and socially share. In order to build your profile you will want to give Google every reason to believe you are trustworthy and rel=”author” is one of the tools they have given you to do that. The sooner you get started, the longer your positive  Google Profile history will be and the more trust you can gain before your competitors wisen up.

Click on the above image for a much larger version.

Important Reminder: although many of these signals are already being noted by Google few of them have been integrated as of yet – at least officially. This article is based on educated speculation.

Questions? Post them in the comments or on the SEO 101 Facebook Page and I will address as many as possible on the next show which airs live at WebmasterRadio.FM on Halloween at 2pm PST / 5pm EST.

Why Having a Strong Google Profile Will Soon be Critical is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

First, I should state I understand this is a means of increasing social engagement and connection-making within LinkedIn. What I find problematic is LinkedIn’s flagrant disregard for our privacy by making such a setting default. If you feel the same way, here are the steps to disable this feature in your LinkedIn account, provided in graphical form:

LinkedIn Privacy Step 1: Under your name in the top right of your account click on “Settings”

LinkedIn Privacy Step 2: Click on “Account” on the resulting Account & Settings page.

LinkedIn Privacy Step 3: Click on “Manage Social Advertising” in the “Account” tab you just enabled.

LinkedIn Privacy Step 4: The Last Step is to un-check the option “LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising.” Then save the changes.

You are done! A special thanks goes out to Steve Woodruff for bringing this to our collective attention.

For more social media privacy tips and news here are some places to start:

• Profile pics on social media sites pose privacy risk, researcher warns
• 5 Essential Facebook Privacy Tips
• (for Canadians) Social Networking and Privacy: from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
• Privacy and Social Media – how I tracked down an entirely family from a single tweet
• … search for “social media privacy” to find more results

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Increasing the bottom line online for businesses since 1997

LinkedIn May Use My Name and Photo in Social Advertising – NOT is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Ross Dunn and John Carcutt had the opportunity to speak with John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trend Analyst from Google Switzerland, on their popular radio show, SEO 101 on WebmasterRadio.FM. In their exclusive 60 minute interview they covered topics including Google Webmaster Tools, the Plus One button,and Google+. Below are just some of the interview highlights.

To hear the entire show (it is well worth the listen) download it on iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/seo-101/id280183060.

Important note: These interview highlights have been paraphrased unless quotes are used.  

Dunn: John, you are a Google Switzerland Senior Webmaster Trend Analyst. What exactly does that entail?

Mueller: My primary role is to connect Webmasters with engineers at Google. I try to make sure everyone is speaking the same language and all the feedback we get from Webmasters  is communicated effectively to our engineers.

Dunn: How did you start working at Google?

Mueller: I had a small software company before joining Google. One of the software products we made was a site map generator called GSiteCrawler, which is one of the more popular windows based generators around. From there, I got in touch with the Google team and started working there almost 4 years ago.

Google Webmaster Tools

Carcutt: How are you involved with Google Webmaster Tools?

Mueller: I work closely with the Webmaster Tools team and Sitemap team. We work together on goals that will help webmasters as well.

Carcutt: When I tell people they should be on Google Webmaster Tools, I tell them that it is the only place that Google will communicate with them directly. What are the most common things Google will tell people and what will they receive?

Mueller: There are a lot of things Google Webmaster Tools would send out. If we run into errors when we are crawling your site’s pages, you would receive a notification. Administration messages are also common, for example if there is a new owner for the website or there has been a transfer of Webmasters. All these messages will be shown in Webmaster Tools or you can get them directly forwarded to your e-mail account. Forwarding messages to your e-mail is beneficial, especially if we run into malware on your site and need to notify you immediately.

Carcutt: Now you have to subscribe to this option is that correct-If you want to receive these notifications via email?

Mueller: Yes, you need to opt in to this feature.

Dunn:  Why is this an opt in feature?

Mueller: I think that’s a more or less a historical thing. We didn’t have the ability to have this as an automatic feature at the beginning and didn’t want to add the new option after the fact.

Dunn: What is your favorite part of Google Webmaster Tools?

Mueller:  This is hard to say. I love crawl error information and top search queries. The notifications we send out are a great help, especially if you have malware on your website and need help figuring out where the malware is coming from.

Dunn:  Kudos on notification. I know someone who was notified because their WordPress site was out of date and needed to be updated.

Mueller: A lot of websites are being hacked because they are outdated so that’s why we try and notify people as soon as possible.

Dunn: It is nice that they’ve added the ability to have multiple users on one account, but there is no administration option allowing one person the ability to add or delete people; one person who controls it all.

Mueller:  If one account is verified and all the other accounts are added from this then that one person is the administrator. Right now we don’t have a “view only” feature so people can strictly view for analysis and not have the ability to change anything.

Dunn:  User roles will be nice.

Mueller:  We are looking at this but we don’t make promises of features before they are ready.

Comparisons with Bing

Dunn: I’ve been kind of impressed with Bing’s changes to their Webmaster Tools.  I thought there would be some interesting contrasts here. One of the things I’m not sure I like a lot, but I know they do is they attribute one of the elements of  a site to a particular geographic area by using their meta language tag on top of the source page. For example, if it is says “en.ca” then Bing would assume you would want to be found more often in English Canada. Does Google listen to this as well?   

Mueller: We have found this information to be unreliable. Our algorithms don’t really know what to do with this information. If a site has non English content and uses a template with English html attributes then it is difficult for our algorithms to know what to do. We focus on the settings in Google Webmaster Tools and determine the language ourselves.

Dunn:  Bing allows you to set a specific time for your website to be crawled. Have you guys considered adding this to yours?

Mueller: I think we’ve looked into it, but it would be worth reviewing to see how it has changed over time. We try to find these times automatically and crawl when the server is more active and less when it is slower.

Dunn: How do you figure that out?

Mueller: We notice it automatically when we crawl the website. We see how long it takes the server to return the information we request. If we notice that crawling the site is slowing things down, we will crawl less and if the site is responding quickly, we try and get all the information we need at that time

Google Plus One

Carcutt: I am curious about the Plus One addition to the metric tools. Why did you do this and how can we benefit from it?

Mueller: If a Webmaster has a +1 button on their pages with the counter showing, then that’s something that is visible, but all the clicks that happen directly in the search results are clicks that the Webmaster basically doesn’t have any information on. We wanted to double that up to give the webmaster information on how many clicks are happening over time and show how useful it is . We want to see if there is a click through rate change when the +1 is visible versus not visible on specific pages. Webmaster Tools allows you to compare this directly.  You can see if there is a specific click through rate change depending on the amount of +1′s.

Dunn: In the +1 Google Webmaster Tools report, what is the value of the impressions? Can you explain how the sorting may benefit someone?

Mueller: The impressions are the number of times that we show the +1 information in the search results. When someone within your social graph has “+1’d” a URL , you will see their small profile picture and the text that says this person has +1′d this information. Usually, if you recognize these people,  or if you see the 5^th or 6^th result has a +1 then that’s the information you use to pick out which search result you are going to select rather than just selecting the first result. 

Dunn: This has nothing to do with your network? Just general +1?

Mueller: Yes but we show a little more in regards to your own network.

Google+

Carcutt: Do you have any thoughts on Google + and how it will affect this matrix?

Mueller:  These +1s are separate from the ones you see in the search results.  Google+ is really new and there are still a lot of changes happening over time. Eventually this will be reflected appropriately.

Dunn: The data is different with +1 in Webmaster Tools than the social metrics that are shown in Google Analytics for Google+. Is there some sort of difference on how these are tracked?

Mueller: The +1 in the search results is based on the page directly. The one within Google + is from within the post.

(Update by Ross: here is an article from Google Webmaster Tools explaining the differences a lot better)

Want More Information?

To listen the entire show, you can download it for free on iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/seo-101/id280183060

Also, don’t forget to tune in to SEO 101 on WebmasterRadio.FM which airs every Monday at 2pm PST / 5pm EST  in a live stream atwww.WebmasterRadio.FM

Do You Have Something Valuable to Share on SEO 101?

Ross Dunn and John Carcutt are always looking for bright beacons of knowledge to interview on SEO 101 but often don’t have the time to hunt them down. If you are one of these people and feel you have something valuable to share with the 10′s of thousands of SEO 101 listeners then pleasecontact Ross Dunn using StepForth’s contact form. Please keep in mind there is no guarantee you will be chosen to appear on the show but we promise to seriously consider your request.

Here are some concepts we would be very receptive to: case studies showing surprising success rates on Google, tools/platforms which will may make the lives of our listeners easier when managing their SEO, current / cutting edge news on SEO you wish to share (that isn’t already all over the news), search engines listeners should consider marketing on… and more.

Interview with John Mueller, Senior Google Webmaster Trend Analyst is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

To quote “Fine Art America” who started the support thread at Google Webmaster Central, this is the issue:

{ Warning Tech Jargon commencing… now }

I use setTimeout to include plusone.js after four seconds. In the first four seconds, you can move your mouse around and the screen will show the coordinates just fine. After four seconds, the plusone.js script executes… the plusone button appears… and the mouse’s clientX and clientY parameters instantly become “undefined”.

That’s it – the plusone script killed them.

I did this with setTimeout just to illustrate the point. If you include plusone.js right from the beginning, then clientX and clientY will never work.

Plusone.js is definitely causing this.

As I understand it this won’t be an issue for a great many people but I don’t understand it very well (LOL) so I am open to your thoughts on this. Do you have an issue with the PlusOne button on your site? If so, please share it here!

Google +1 Button Javascript Conflict is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

On a side note, I don’t post links on the blog like this very often but I do share great articles I find online all of the time using my StumbleUpon account (a WIDE range of articles) and my Twitter account (@RossDunn) where I link to more web marketing related content.

Read Mashable’s 10 Tips for Facebook Postings is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.