Almost 9 months after the last major PageRank toolbar update (2nd April 2010), Google finally puts an end to the rumors that PageRank metric is ditched. Currently a PageRank toolbar update is on the way and it should become visible within a few hours from all Google DataCenters.
To check if and how your website is affected by this update you can use the
Multi DC PageRank tool. If the values from the different DataCenters do not much it means that your Toolbar PageRank value has probably changed.
Note that few days ago a thread on Google Webmaster Help Forum confirmed that the next PageRank update will be available soon. John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Google Employee wrote:
“We do update the Toolbar PageRank regularly, even if that’s not as regularly as some of you wish. I agree that it would be nice to have it updated more frequently. Given the time since the last update, I imagine you’ll start seeing another one in the near future.”
How does this update affect your SEO Campaign?
This recent update does not directly affect your SEO campaign. The PageRank value that you see on the Toolbar should not be confused with the real PageRank value of your pages. Unlike toolbar PageRank, the real PageRank is updated on a daily basis. An increase on your toolbar value indicates that your real PageRank has been recently increased but don’t forget that this is one of the 200 signals that Google uses to evaluate the rankings. PageRank is an important signal, but still there are lots of other things that you should not ignore.
New year brings a new joy to life, new hope, new commitment & new way of life. I think, with the new year, we will witness some major changes in SEO as well. I was reading a latest news on SEO & there is one headline which captured my attention & that is Google PageRank. Well, No, its not about Google PageRank update as you might have think about, but this is something which you didn’t have imagined.
Google will loose its Toolbar PageRank : Rights reserved to Standford University
Yes, Google might lose its exclusive rights to use Pagerank this year. The fact is Stanford University actually owns the patent to “PageRank”, and Google has exclusive licensing rights to it- but only until 2011.
So, May be thats the reason, we have not seen any major update in Google Toolbar PageRank since last April,2010 & may be we will not see in the near future. The possibilities are many. May be Google get extension just like the last time or may be Google introduce some kind of Trust Rank or may be they just ignore it & completely focus on their algorithm update.
Google Webmaster Forum thread refers that, “The PageRank patents held by Stanford do not refer to a toolbar, but rather a process of calculating a probability that if one were to start from one page on the web, that they might end up upon another specific page.”
So, What do you think ? Will Google remove the Toolbar PageRank ? Will it effect your SEO efforts ? Eagerly waiting to have a thoughtful discussion over here. This sounds like really interesting topic to me.
Twitter is a wonderful business tool, not least because it’s free. All it will cost is your time (and if that’s in short supply, you can hire a social media marketer to manage it for you).
Used well, Twitter can provide good exposure for your business, but you can also damage your brand with social media marketing if you’re not careful, so it’s worth learning the biggest do’s and don’ts before you start using Twitter.
Tip 1: Be Yourself and Be Human
The beauty of Twitter is that it’s a huge global community of human beings (mostly; there are spammer accounts but they’re easy to spot, block and report). So do show your human side, especially when using your business account. Talk about things that matter to you: funny things your children say, recent achievements, your favorite band or TV show, and so on. Join in with conversations that interest you – be friendly, show emotion, and use smilies if you want to.
On the other hand, don’t be too human. Don’t share anything you wouldn’t share at a real-world business networking event; keep intimate health problems and controversial or potentially offensive opinions to yourself.
Tip 2: Watch How You Write
Some people write well, others don’t – that’s true in all areas of life, not just on Twitter. You don’t need to be a bestselling novelist to use Twitter, but it helps if you have basic literacy skills (and if you use Twitter at the website instead of through a client, your Tweets will be spellchecked as you type anyway – which helps).
However good (or bad) your writing skills are, with Twitter’s 140-character limit you’ll need to be creative with your Tweets. Your Tweets need to be concise yet informative, and often you’ll be trying to squeeze in a URL too (URL shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com are lifesavers).
One definite don’t is using text speak. Text speak is fine if you’re 13, but as a professional adult promoting your business you’re just going to look silly, and won’t communicate your messages efficiently – unless you’re targeting 13 year olds.
Tip 3: Share and Share Alike
If you have some good news – related to your business or your personal life – share it; everybody loves a good news story.
Do share links – to your website, your blog, your local news service, or anything else that interests your followers. This is a great way to get conversations going. But do remember to explain what the link’s about, or your followers will feel less inclined to click it. And don’t Tweet the same link over and over; people will quickly become bored and may stop following you.
Do retweet your friends’ links, too. They’ll be grateful, and so will your followers if the link is interesting and relevant. But here’s a very big ‘do’ – DO make sure you click the link and read the content before sharing it with your followers, or you could end up sharing a page that’s irrelevant or offensive, or which contradicts your usual position on the subject.
Tip 4: Be Part of the Community
Don’t treat Twitter as your personal billboard. It’s not. It’s a community, millions of members strong, and the community as a whole is not very tolerant of users who constantly advertise. Try to stick to the 80-20 rule when you use Twitter for business: no more than 20% of your Tweets should advertise or self-promote, and at least 80% should be non-promotional. If you can get the ratio down to 90-10 or 95-5, even better.
Listen to what people are saying, and join in. Twitter is a network of conversations, so it’s good practice to listen and respond to parts of those conversations that interest you. Don’t just stand in the middle of the room with a megaphone, shouting “I’m fabulous! I’m selling widgets at 20% off this week!” Again, if you wouldn’t do it at a business networking event, don’t do it on Twitter.
Do retweet your friends’ requests for help (for example, charity appeals and sponsorship requests), and do introduce friends that are new to Twitter and could do with some followers. And again – do retweet useful, interesting links from people you follow, but always check links before sending.
Tip 5: Mind Your Language
Don’t use offensive language when representing your business on Twitter; even mild swearwords can put sensitive souls off following you (and besides – cursing in public is hardly professional).
Use Twitter to answer customer questions and solve their problems by all means. Many organizations use Twitter as a customer services tool very effectively. But never, ever use an impolite or impatient tone with a customer. On Twitter, everything you say is out there for everyone to see, so leave your followers with the best possible impression of your brand at all times… the Internet has a very long memory!
Finally – consider this a bonus tip, since it’s not really connected to any of the previous ones. Try to enjoy yourself when you use Twitter. Try to embrace all that’s good about Twitter – the new friendships and business contacts you’ll make, the fun hashtags and trending topics, the strong community spirit – and before long you’ll be singing (or is that Tweeting?) Twitter’s praises to anyone who’ll listen.
Google's Engage is a brand new program that brings small businesses and individuals opportunities to help their clients in boosting their businesses through online advertisements services. It will provide free education to web masters, designers, developers, SEOs, agencies, individuals from almost any business background, enabling them, in turn, to assist their customers and clients' businesses. Thus promoting an all round growth and benefit.
This program is entirely run by Google, and is free for anyone to participate, all you need to do is to sign up. It involves training programs, that will be provided through webinars, that will educate the trainees on how to help their clients with online advertisements. Google will also give away Google AdWords coupons, marketing materials, certification help and many other useful knowledge. Using the Google AdWords coupons, businesses that are not familiar with AdWords can try them for free and without a commitments.
Engage is available only in the UK and the US at present. However, it has already, successfully helped thousands of individuals and businesses. So, the earlier you sign up for it – the better, because Google reserves the right to deny access of parties on a case-by-case basis as the program has a limited capacity.
Google is making changes, as it seems, in its Google Maps UI. As a result, users are expected to get new navigation controls in the Google Maps. The ordinary buttons for Map or satellite view selection and the drop down list for toggling geo-tag features like the photos are to be replaced by more stylish graphical icons.
The changes also brings various other cool features in the 'more' column that conforms to the made changes. The Google Maps also included the Hotpot feature. Octavian "Vivi" Costache, a Hotpot Engineer, comments on Hotpot saying, “When you need a great restaurant, hotel or pub, who do you turn to first for a recommendation? Your friends. We wanted to recreate that valuable exchange with Hotpot, our local recommendation engine from Google Places, which allows you to add friends whose opinions you trust and see their place recommendations right in your search results.”
Therefore, Hotpot is a social recommendation feature of Google. Users of Hotpot can rate a place like mentioned above restaurant, hotel, pub, theater and so on according to their experience. This way one can recommend friends or see their recommendations on a location they have been to or want to go. Currently, the Hotpot feature is available in beta mode. Google is experimenting further and will come up with additions and changes to give Hotpot's users a better experience.
Another cool feature added to the Google Maps is the new 45° imagery feature. It has some refreshed 45° images for various places in the US including Albuquerque (NM), Contra Costa County (CA), Escondido (CA), Long Beach (CA), Norfolk (VA), New Orleans (LA), San Antonio (TX), St Petersburg (FL), Tucson (AZ) and Van Nuys (CA). Users can now view these places in the new 45° images provided. Google also said that there will be more added in 2011.
So, have fun using the new features and the made changes on the Google Maps. Also keep watching out for the mentioned updates and additions as well.
The Yahoo search blog announced on January 13th, 2011, that the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance team is now serving in three new countries – Australia, Brazil and Mexico. Kartik Ramakrishnan, Vice President, Yahoo! Search Transition, commented on the blog, “As planned, we are moving forward with the global transition of certain Yahoo! Search back-end functions to Microsoft’s search platform, and have just completed this process for organic search in Australia, Brazil and Mexico.”
The transition that started in August 2010 with Bing officially powering Yahoo's organic search results in USA and Canada, was followed by Microsoft adCenter powering all the paid search advertisements on both Bing and Yahoo! owned and operated properties and publisher networks in the U.S. and Canadian markets, in October 2010. There have been extensive tests conducted to ensure that the users still get the conveniences of the Yahoo! search with the speed and power of Microsoft's Bing after the transition is complete. As for now, folks in Australia, Brazil and Mexico where the alliance is now serving, will see a “Powered by Bing” indicator at their search results pages' bottom.
Another update in the latest blog regarding the alliance was that this move is a step further, for the Yahoo! And Microsoft alliance, towards their continuing attempt for a quality transition with their partners and advertisers around the world. The alliance, as planned, seems to be progressing well in bringing benefits of the combined marketplace to their worldwide customers. The full transition is expected to be completed by early 2012 for all markets worldwide.
The industry of SEO changed massively in 2010; (see our Review of 2010 in Search). We have seen the introduction / growth of Google Places, Google Instant, and Google Preview etc. Many of these changes have been keeping webmasters busy updating their websites so they don’t lose customers or business as a result of all these changes. One thing I wouldn’t like to bet against is Google Places / Local business listings becoming a lot more competitive and dominant. Google seem to have focussed on this strongly through the second half of 2010. The SERP has in my opinion become a lot more relevant, it gives you chance to find good information, whether it be a news feed, a blog post, local business listing or a natural organic result.
The last big PageRank update was in April 2010. This is one of the longest periods (as far as I can remember) that it has not been updated in. This gives me the impression that Google could be changing or may have changed its ranking algorithm to place a lower importance on the number of inbound links your site requires for ranking in Google Places. I would say that your location and content / service you provide are much more important than link building. Google have now even introduced reviews for local businesses, not only does it allow you to review it using Google, it also picks up reviews from big review websites (see below).. who knows, having 100 positive reviews could be better than 100 back links.
A Google search for “plumbing Manchester” brought back this as the number one result. The website itself looks to have about 90 back links (Majestic SEO) and doesn’t even have a mention of “Manchester” in the title tag. The first organic result (http://www.empireplumbingandheating.co.uk/) has about 3500 back links (Majestic SEO) and has a mention of Plumbing and Manchester in the title tag. These changes could potentially confuse a lot more SEO’s during 2011.
Good Points! I have noticed a lot of these changes. Google places listings being integrated with organic was a big deal for regional/local campaigns.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 6th, 2011 at 1:21 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed.
Almost 9 months after the last major PageRank toolbar update (2nd April 2010), Google finally puts an end to the rumors that PageRank metric is ditched. Currently a PageRank toolbar update is on the way and it should become visible within a few hours from all Google DataCenters. 
