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Archive for the ‘Weblogs’ Category
Google – Want to See My Wonder Wheel?
Friday, July 31, 2009
Google has recently rolled out some changes to their search results pages. If you are an avid Google News user most of these changes wont seem that new but to others its a whole new ball game.
Below is a screen shot of a search for the term Schipul. Much like the Google News search results you are now given a link to ‘Show options’
Clicking on that link opens up a few options on the left side of the screen
This will allow you to see recent content related to that term based on the time criteria. You can even sort by date or even related searches.
Ok, this is really cool BUT I want to check to the Wonder Wheel option.
Google Wonder Wheel
Oh sure its been out since May but it hasn’t shown up on the regular search page until this week. So what is Google Wonder Wheel? It is visual wheel image that shows you related search terms based on your term. Below is a screenshot of Schipul again.
Click on another term and you get another wheel
Google Wonder Wheel, Well So What?
I know you’re probably thinking to yourself ‘Well, Jason I really have no need for more graphs in my life so why is this important?’ Well I’m glad you didn’t really ask. If you’ve ever wondered what Google thinks about your site and its content this will give you a quick idea on that.
If you’ve built your site and you haven’t optimized your content you might be telling the search engines something completely different than you want. Run a simple search on your company and or keyterms and see what Google thinks is related to that. If you don’t show up your web presence might not be big enough or your site isn’t optimized. One way or the other you need to get that fixed.
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – jason@schipul.com
Twitter is Changing – Search, Rank and Indexing
Friday, May 8, 2009
Most people on Twitter have found their way over to the Twitter search tool at http://search.twitter.com. It will show a reverse timeline of all tweets containing keywords you are interested in seeing. This is extremely helpful in looking up brands, trends, and finding other people who have similar interests to follow.
Twitter Search is about to change. CNET notes Twitter will start indexing not just the contents of the 140 character microblogs, but also crawling and indexing the content of pages sent in shortened URLs. This will provide a much clearer indication of what people are interested in and how topics are ranking. This could be a great tool to organize data and filter some of the recent spam clutter on Twitter. Twitter may be positioning for a run at part of Google’s pie in the Search community. Delivering relevant real-time results based on rank, reputation and relevance would be valuable in the semantic search development.
What does this mean to the business user getting started with Twitter? Building a effective profile in now becomes more important than ever. Many small businesses are aware of the impact of Twitter, followers and reputation in their community. Now, reputation could be ranked and the content of websites will be measured via retweets, shortened URLs and quality vs. quantity. This isn’t anything new, we have known good content is the best way to develop followers and build a community, now Twitter will begin to follow the same rules. It is conceivable to realize Twitter accounts with good followers, retweets and good reputation will be ranked higher in Twitter search results.
What can you do? Continue to learn the best tools and etiquette for using Twitter. For example, Twitter just switched its default link shortener to Bit.ly. Bit.ly offers real-time stats on the most clicked links, clickthrough and where users are coming from. You can link to your own website and announce new blog posts and website updates, but more importantly, share the link love to good content beyond your site and contribute to the community. Use Twitter Search to find others in your community who share similar interests. Follow them and listen, then participate in the community. Finally, monitor how well you are doing compared to others using Twitalyzer to measure Influence and other new metrics.
For more information about this article, learning to effectively use Twitter and other Social Media tools, or learning how to manage analytics, please contact our Business Development Team at Schipul – The Web Marketing Company.
