Archive for the ‘Search Marketing’ Category
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.
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.
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.
