Real Time Search Looks Impressive
Google finally unveiled its real-time search results today and I have to say that it is so darn impressive I’m blogging about it. So what is real-time search? Well, according to Google:
Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.
Google real-time search does exactly what it says on the can by returning some really impressive real time results from a variety of news sites, blogs and social media sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, MySpace and Identi.ca (although Facebook and MySpace updates are yet to implemented).
Apart from its highly accurate real time relevancy, the real appeal of Google’s real time search results to me is the natural flowing integration it has with Google’s other static search results.
Bert & Ernie on Google – Priceless
I’m not sure if you’ve seen this but my fav Sesame Street characters – Bert and Ernie are on today’s Google home page. I know it might be a bit of a mundane topic to blog about but I absolutely love them and appreciate the impact Sesame Street had on my education earlier on in my life that later gave me an edge in life. Happy 40th Birthday Sesame Street.
How to Calculate Your PageRank
Although I am not a proponent of PageRank as one of the more important ranking factors in SEO, high page rank values are still a common factor across authoritative sites.
Achieving a ‘decent’ PageRank is still part of most SEO campaigns for newly launched websites. ‘Decent’ in my opinion could be termed as a PageRank of 3 and above. I have to say I’ve seen websites with PRs of 1-3 rank No.1 for highly competitive key phrases.
So if you are a PageRank junkie or just an SEO whose client requires a decent PR as a key performance indicator (KPI) for their project, here is a nice PageRank Calculator table that guides you on approximately how many links you would need to acquire to get your desired PageRank
| PR | Links for PR3 | Links for PR4 | Links for PR5 | Links for PR6 | Links for PR7 | Links for PR 8 |
| PR 1 | 555 | 3,055 | 16,803 | 92,414 | 508,277 | 2,795,522 |
| PR 2 | 101 | 555 | 3,055 | 16,803 | 92,414 | 508,277 |
| PR 3 | 18.5 | 101 | 555 | 3,055 | 16,803 | 92,414 |
| PR 4 | 3.5 | 18.5 | 101 | 555 | 3,055 | 16,803 |
| PR 5 | 1 | 3.5 | 18.5 | 101 | 555 | 3,055 |
| PR 6 | 0.5 | 1 | 3.5 | 18.5 | 101 | 555 |
| PR 7 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 1 | 3.5 | 18.5 | 101 |
| PR 8 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 1 | 3.5 | 18.5 |
| PR 9 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 1 | 3.5 |
| PR 10 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 1 |
So to get a PR5 for a newly setup website, you would need only 1 PR7 link or 101 PR4 links. And to get a site up to PR6, you would need 19 PR6 links or 4 PR7 links or a massive 555 PR4 links.
Page Rank Update – October 30th 2009
Another PageRank toolbar update is in progress at the moment. I think it would take a few more days to fully update across the web. Although web page / website PageRank updates are not as important as actually ranking for your key phrases of choice, it is still a well accepted parameter of a good website in the webmaster community.
Some site’s of mine & my clients have had their PR increased, some other websites’ PR have remained static and others have actually dropped. I have however doublechecked their organic search referral traffic and their Google rankings; they all appear to be normal. It’s yet more proof that PR does not have a huge impact on traffic and rankings.
Lets just sit tight and wait for the update to propagate.
Photo credits: DannySullivan via Flickr
New Music Search Features on Google
Google have just released their Google Music Search service. Its all part of their Universal search efforts in a bid to make search more relevant. The idea behind Google Music Search is brilliant – according to Google when you search for a song, artist, album or even lyrics you should expect to find more relevant results like audio previews provided by Lala or MySpace (who have acquired iLike).
I unfortunately could not personally test it as it is gradually being rolled across the U.S. first before it hits this side of the pond. But here is a video that shows what it can do.
I am keen to know if Google would be selling or collaborating with music stores like iTunes to actually sell music.
So UK Internet Advertising Finally Overtakes TV Advertising Spend – Paid Search is the Real Winner
I started today with my usual tech news digs on Twitter and RSS feeds BUT this release from the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) and article from the Guardian stood out from my endless stream of tech new articles and blog updates. They are both about Online advertising expenditure finally surpassing TV advertising spend. It was inevitable but I really didn’t expect it to happen so quickly!
The summary of the two articles was that:
- Online advertising expenditure in the first half of 2009 was £1.75 billion
- TV advertising over the same period (H1 2009) was £1.6 billion
It’s not a huge margin but considering that the entire advertising industry contracted by 16.6% in H1 2009 and TV advertising declined by 17% in H1 2009 (year on year); online advertising proved to be a recession buster with 4.6% year-on-year growth in the first half of 2009. Freaking amazing…I’ll say!
Lets dig a little deeper to find out the sectors in online advertising that actually tick:
7 Facts All SEOs Should Know About Google Caffeine
As you probably already know, Google announced not just an algorithmic update but an entire architecture re-write of its web search called “Google Caffeine” a few day’s back. The head of Google’s Webspam team, Matt Cutts actually made a comparison of the Caffeine update to the infamous “Big Daddy Update” back in 2005.
The big question at the moment is what does the Google Caffeine update mean to SEOs? Here are seven things every SEO expert should know about Caffeine:
Matt Cutts Sheds More Light on the Google Caffeine Update
This is a WebProNews interview with Matt Cutts about Google Caffeine, an über major Google update that has meant a complete re-write of Google’s web search architecture. The Caffeine update means improved crawling, faster indexing and more relevant search results. I would be writing about its impact on SEO in a subsequent post. In the meantime, enjoy the video!
Check out Caffeine on: http://www2.sandbox.google.com.
Dos & Don’ts of Landing Page Design – 7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design
I came across this Webinar video presentation this morning when doing some research on the landing design best practises and have to say it is the best I have come across as yet. It was presented by Tim Ash, author of the book, Landing Page Optimization and the CEO of sitetuners.com for the official Google AdWords blog, Inside AdWords.
I have to say, it is a really long video, with a duration of about 1hr 15mins. For that reason, I have summarised the key salient points from his presentation. Hope you enjoy it!
A Short Story About the Romance between Public Relations and the Internet…so far
The Public Relations industry has not been the same since the advent of the internet. The first wave of change in the PR industry was the advent of corporate websites and the ability of the information on corporate websites to represent organisational opinion, a brand and make PR announcements. PR professionals had to adapt by adding and controlling content on the PR sections of corporate websites.
Online News
Managing PR content on corporate websites as a tactic was short-lived and not sufficient enough in the ever changing internet. With the sheer speed of information on the web through news sites, PR professionals had to figure out how to also grab attention from ‘authoritative’ old and new media news websites.
