Hey, Bloggers: Now When You Break a Story, Google Could Credit You For It

If you’ve been wondering whether you blogging and online reporting ever gets noticed, Google is coming to the rescue. Recently, it announced a new meta tag for journalists and bloggers, which credits the publisher who first breaks a story on the Internet.

Sounds good in theory, but in the article “The New Google Journalism Tag Could Work in Reverse,” at the blog SEO and Tech Daily, Charlie Anzman says there are still problems.

First of all the meta tag is actually tags – one for the first person to have the story attributed to them, and one for the first person to syndicate the story online.

The problem with this, Anzman says, is twofold:
1. Most current reputable blog and news organizations credit their source with a link. Now, they could decide to quit doing that and then just use the tag, which isn’t visible to the reader. So the author of the story gets no visibility for his/her work.

2. Anzman says the current trend to switch to popular blogging software means that a plug-in for that software needs to be created to accommodate the meta tag. That means a re-writing of code, so any major adaptation of this meta tag is not in the near future.

Anzman says this doesn’t really solve the problem of “story stealing,” a problem so prevalent that Reuters now prohibits its reporters from breaking stories on Twitter. Other writers pick up the scoops and claim them as their own.

In short, Anzman feels that for Google, it’s back to the drawing board.

2011 Could be the Year of the Search Engine, if 2010 is Any Indication

As we pull up on the end of 2010, it’s kind of hard to tag this year to one monumental moment in SEO. This is simply because so many things occurred.The ongoing Google/Facebook spat saw both sides releasing updates and improvements and redesigns, etc. throughout the latter half of the year. Is Google Instant Previews really more important than Facebook Places? Only time will tell.

But one area of SEO that was very busy – and really didn’t get that much press – was in the development of new search engines. Here's a review of the four new contenders who head into 2011 hoping to grab at least a piece of the action.

Quora: Billed in the press as a type of search engine, Quora calls itself as an online knowledge market. It doesn’t so much help you find information as much as it lets you ask questions, which other Quora users can answer or not. It's up to you to check on their authority.

Advantages: If someone has answered a question in the ballpark of the answer you chose, you might find the information you need.

Disadvantages: While probably millions of questions have been posed, very few answers seem to exist so far on Quora. It does not appear to be catching on.

Swingly: You could call Swingly a spiffed-up version of Ask.com. But you'd be selling it short. Its developers have gathered together more than 100 billion question and answer pairs of information. All of the info provided in a Swingly question is accessed from other web sources, like a traditional search engine.

Advantages: Swingly can offer answers to virtually any fact-based question in a flash. By paring down the search parameters, the answers provided can be extremely succinct.

Disadvantages: Swingly is NOT very good at all with speculative or opinion-based questions. Questions starting with the word “Did” or "Will" can cause confusion. Also, it's a bit confusing to figure where to click to go to your chosen result site.



Blekko: Blekko invites the user to “slash” search, literally, by breaking down search queries using a slashtag. For example, if you want to look at political websites that appeal mostly to conservatives, for example, you can enter “political/conservative” and the first results to come up are for Fox News. Type “political/liberal” on the other hand, and results for more liberal sites appear (Washington Monthly, Huffington Post, etc.).

Advantages: Blekko is capable of searching by categorical breakdown, as opposed to simply raw terms that have a page in common. This is why you can pull up conservative or liberal pages, for example, as opposed to just pages with those words on them.

Disadvantages: It's “geeky.” "Normal" people don’t want to have to add an action (separate terms by anything other than a comma) in order to get results. They want answers now. By adding a task before getting a result, Blekko leaves impatient searchers behind.

Qwiki: The latest addition to the search engine field, Qwiki is currently in Alpha testing (go to Qwiki.com to get on their troubleshooter list). You're in for a surprise. Enter a term into the search window (Qwiki says there are 2,000 entries at the moment, but experimenting with it implies if it’s in Wikipedia, you’ll get results), and you’re treated to a 30-second, audio visual summary of your product.

Advantages: It sure is fun! Qwiki should prove to be very popular in schools.

Disadvantages: What’s the point? That’s what most people will ask about various aspects of Qwiki. You get the idea that Qwiki was developed in the hopes that one of the big guys – Google or Bing, for example -- will buy it and incorporate it into their search engines.

HubSpot Answers Six of the Most Common Social Media Marketing Questions

Having a social media presence for your company is a given. However, once you establish that presence, getting people to notice it is an entirely different matter. That’s why Magdalena Georgieva, writing for hubspot.com, recently discussed Dan Zarella’s excellent presentation, “The Science of Social Media.” In her article “Answered: 6 Frequent Questions about Social Media Marketing,” she says that a recent appearance by Zarella inspired some very thought provoking questions:

1. When you put up a company Facebook page, how do you get somebody to “like” you? You can accomplish this by creating some form of positive interaction. One good example is creating a new tab on your Facebook page that offers something free and compelling to anyone who “likes” you. Contests for people who “like” you work well , too.

2. Can social media be anti-social? Non-social? Too social? You can certainly be anti-social by appearing rude or obnoxious, as well as non-social by not developing long-term relationships . Too social? As long as what you’re doing doesn’t overhype itself and come off as spam, it’s not easy to be too social in social media.

3. What tools should be used to track specific social media metrics? Zarella recommends the paid tools Trendrr and Radian6. Georgieva recommends Hubspot’s own social media monitoring platform and marketing automation software. She also mentions Twitter Grader as a quick, free way to evaluate your current social media influence.

4. Should the company have a landing page tab on Facebook? Most certainly. It’s a perfect way to use a call to action that doesn’t look overbearing.

5. What’s the best way to engage influencers? Influencers are those people and online connections most likely to get excited about your product or brand, who will then spread the word to their friends, etc.Sometimes simply paying attention to influencers is enough to get them talking. This can be done via direct contact or even mentioning them by name in a blog entry.

6. How do you stay personable on line without tweeting about yourself? Talk instead about things that interest you. Point out interesting articles and links that you can discuss online.

Search Engine Watch.com’s Duncan Parry Offers Tips on Staying Caught Up in Search News

The last few months are the best indication in a long time that the search business is constantly changing. Duncan Parry at SearchEngineWatch.com points out that today’s new employees in the business have never heard of AltaVista, Excite, Lycos and many of the other search engines that once dominated the field.

In his article “How to Keep Up to Date In Search,” Parry offers some pointers on what to take note of in this business, and what to ignore, since it will eventually change anyway.

1. Ignore noise. Parry says that with all the blogs and articles published every day, there are more “experts” entering this field by the minute. Most of it can be ignored. Everybody has an opinion, Parry says; whether those opinions mean anything depends upon whose saying them. He suggests sticking to sites that you find to be credible and correct. He also says to keep up to date on technical developments in the products you currently use or are planning to use.

2. Get an RSS Reader. All sites worth their salt have RSS feeds. Make sure you have access to a reader so you can add your favorite sites to it. This puts all relevant articles into one easy-to-find place, and allows you to add more at any time. Parry recommends Google Reader for its ease of use, and Feedly for its looks. (Feedly can be linked to Google Reader to give you the best of both worlds.

3. Watch the mainstream press. SEO sites are not usually the first place that you will find interesting news about developments in the profession. That’s given to major news sites first. Subscribe to the New York Times, USAToday, BBC News, etc.

4. Learn about digital technology in General. Along with Mashable.com, Parry provides a significant list of popular sites that you should be reading.

5. Some search sites are musts. Specifically, Parry recommends SearchEngineWatch and SearchEngineLand. They offer daily newsletters and feeds. They sum up the news you need to know and make it readable. Parry also recommends Search Engine Roundtable, as it often seems to be the first site with hot news from Google.

6. Don’t be afraid to cut. Culling from your Reader list over time is to be expected. If a site isn’t doing anything for you anymore, get rid of it.

Parry says that there’s good stuff to be found out there, but even the good stuff can get overwhelming. Determine which experts are worth your time and trust and take it from there.

What’s in a Word? Plenty – Click Through Rate on PPC Jumps when Google Changes One Little Word

About a week ago, Google made a very small change to its search results. Did you catch it?

If you don’t bother with PPC ads, you might have missed it, but the effect was phenomenal. As reported on TheSearchAgents.com by blogger Alec Green, Google changed the phrase “Sponsored Links” to “Ads.” That’s all it took to see an 11.4% jump in click throughs.

The Search Agents analysts performed a pre/post analysis of user behavior between the last week of “Sponsored Ads” and the first week of “Ads.” Their findings:

Across all AdWords campaigns examined, the average position increased 1.5%

Total impressions decreased by the same amount.

Clicks increased 9.7%.

Average cost per click dropped 2.3%.

Total cost increased more than 7%.

Clickthroughs increased 11.4%.

The double-digit increase for clickthrough came as a huge surprise to the Search Agents team.

So what caused the change? Was it pressure from the FTC to be clearer to consumers what PPC ads are? Then, in turn, did it turn out to be true that most people didn’t know what a “Sponsored Link” was?” This isn’t likely, says Green, since the “Sponsored Links” typeface is the smallest on the page, and reducing the term by 11 letters to “ads” would make it even smaller and harder to see than it already is. If the increase sustains itself over the next few weeks however, that may be exactly what’s spurring the growth.

Facebook Email Another Needed Volley in the Social Media Wars, Ruud Hein Says

Hot on the heels of Google’s announcement of Instant Previews last week, Facebook confirmed what many people had suspected for a while: Facebook email is on its way.

The service will compete directly with Google’s Gmail audience, and the upstart may just be the competition Google needs, says Ruud Hein at SearchEnginePeople.com.

Using copious illustrations, Hein presents “The Three Reasons Why Facebook Email is a Big Deal.”


1. Facebook Overtakes Everything. Hein points out that not long ago, the way people did things online was different. They got pictures from Flickr, watched videos on YouTube, IM’d on Live Messenger and made announcements on Facebook. But now, Hein says more and more people are using Facebook to do all of these things – except email.

2. Facebook’s Social Graph Gets Larger. Hein uses a social graph to show the way all social networks used to be connected (Yahoo to LinkedIn to Gmail to Facebook, etc.), and another to show how social integration will work with Facebook email . He says: “By also overtaking email and incorporating as many type of social connection streams as possible, the Facebook social graph of you -- and as a result of its whole 500 million user network -- becomes much, much more complete.”Hein’s point is that Facebook will now not only know whom you connect with on Facebook, but also whom you connect with outside of it.

3. Email is Huge. In spite of what you may have heard – that email is losing its popularity, especially among younger audiences – Hein says email is still very much alive. He points out that Email marketing is still the #1 social list-based moneymaker. So Facebook is entering the email market at the right time.

What this all means to you, Hein says, is that getting people to “like” your company will become much more important. Messages within your social sphere will be given different “weight” than those out of that sphere. What’s more, keeping your company’s emails off people’s “spam” lists will be vital. Facebook has become, Hein says, “the world’s most efficient spam filter.” Similarly, you’re going to have to target your ads even more pointedly to reach your intended audience.

Google Instant Previews: Will it Change the SEO Landscape?

The closing months of 2010 are proving to be busy ones for Google – and by extension, busy ones for the entire SEO industry. The recent release of Google’s Instant Previews, particularly, has sent waves of reaction through the search community.

By now you probably know that when you click the little magnifying glass next to a search result (or when you tell Google to do it automatically), a graphic representation of the page you’re considering pops up.

Some people, like Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand.com, took the Instant Preview release as more water under the bridge. In fact, Sullivan wonders what took Google so long to do this. He reminds us that Ask.com tried a similar tactic some years back that was not overly well received.

However, other critics, such as Patrick Stafford at SmartCompany.com, see a much more significant change coming to SEO as we know it. If people begin to click on a search result due to the “look” of the site, rather than the information in the descriptive copy, your position on a page may take a back seat to how attractive your page is to the eye.

Experts say that much to the dismay of webmasters, but much to the joy of page designers everywhere, how your page looks is now going to be important. Colors, the size and position of the logo, even your who site layout now needs to consider how eye-catching it is.

Knowing that, 2011 could be an interesting year for SEO indeed.