Google Freshness Update
A few weeks ago, Google announced a new algorithm change to serve “fresher” results in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). So, for searches done on the Google search engine, the results displayed will sometimes contain very recent pages. The name of this algorithm change is the “Google Freshness Update”.
As an example, if you search for “final score hockey Pittsburgh Montreal”, you probably want to see the result of the most recent game between these 2 teams, and not the score of a 2006 game, right? For many other searches however, this Google update has no impact. You do not need a very fresh result for the “Songs Last Album Elvis Presley” search…
Image by SearchMetrics.com
This change in the Google Algorithm has been made possible by the major architecture changes done in the Data Centers that were completed last year. This huge infrastructure change was called “Caffeine”, and made possible for Google to crawl and index the web much more quickly than before. That change was a prerequisite to the Google Freshness Update.
More details on this on the “Giving you fresher, more recent search results” blog post of the Official Google Blog.
Google Plus Pages for Enterprises
Finally, Google is letting enterprises have their own Google Plus Pages, which was only allowed to “humans” before. It has been announced on the official Google blog at the “Google+ Pages: connect with all the things you care about” on November 7th 2011.
This of course was to be expected, since Facebook allows enterprises to have their own Facebook Pages.
To create your page, you can go on the plus.google.com/pages/create. To see what possibilities are offered, here are some examples of big brands having their Google Plus Pages:
As of today, it is not possible to link a Google Places address to a Google Plus Page though. It probably will soon be offered though, from what can be heard from Google representatives. Also, it is currently not possible to have a “Vanity url” like Facebook is offering. As an example, the Google Plus page of Pepsi is at https://plus.google.com/111883881632877146615 instead of https://plus.google.com/pepsi. Of course, it will probably become available in the next few months.
To help promote you Enterprise Google Plus Page, Google offers badges that can be displayed on your website. To create a badge, the web address is https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/badge/config.
Another interesting particularity of the Google Plus Pages is that more than one is allowed per enterprise.
Google Plus Pages for Enterprises are another way to help promote your business online.
Google Products for Enterprises…
To help enterprises doing business online, Google just created a new service, called Learn With Google. This service is actually in Beta.
From that is explained on the official Google Adwords blog, at the “Introducing Learn with Google », this new site presents marketing tools and strategies to do business online. The products presented are, of course, all Google products such as Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Google Places, Google Apps, Google Webmaster Tools, etc.
The Learn with Google site features many informative videos, as well as documentation on 3 main themes:
- Starting a Business Online
- Marketing a Business Online
- Running a Business Online
The information can also be accessed differently, depending if you are a web agency, a new advertiser, and experienced advertiser or a publisher.
A very interesting site then, that I strongly suggest to those who would like to know more on Search Engine Marketing.
Of course, OptimisationV can help you implement those products to help you increase the revenues of your company. Please do not hesitate to contact us by phone at 514-622-7073, or by email at info@OptimisationV.com
Google Algorithm Changes
SEOmoz just released a new document, that is supposed to be kept up to date all the time. It is the « Google Algorithm Change History », that will present the algorithm changes in Google Search. It is very interesting since it does display the modifications that were documented since 2000, with the appearance of the Google Toolbar.
For the SEOs, this new document will be very useful to quickly find information on the old Google updates, and to keep informed on the new updates.
The “Google Algorithm Change History” is just here, and has been announced on the SEOmoz blog on the « Announcing: The Complete Google Algo History » blog post.
Google Analytics Dashboard
Google Analytics is an amazing web analytics product. No wonder then that more than 50% of the websites on the web have Google Analytics installed. The huge amount of data that can be extracted from Google Analytics for a website are impressive, and can often be overwhelming.
To help managers and website owners to quickly and easily access important information, Trimali Technologies (founded by Stéphane Guérin) developed DashThis!, an executive dashboard extracting data from Google Analytics. This great tool let you on a single page all the data you need without having to connect to Google Analytics or to DashThis!. The data is also easily seen from the iPhone or other smart phones.
For ore details on this great tool, I suggest you take a look at the DashThis! website. A Live Demo is also available, that will convince you of it’s value. How much does it cost? You can use it for free for 30 days, and the offered plans start at the ridiculously low price of 10$ a month.
