DBE Review of Google SearchWiki

There’s a lot of buzz and a good bit of confusion surrounding SearchWiki, a new personalization tool from Google which allows people to re-rank, add/delete and comment on search results.

To help set the record straight, here is DBE’s take on Google SearchWiki and its impact on SEO:

How does Google SearchWiki work?

If you’re logged into your Google account, SearchWiki enables you to modify the Google search results to meet your needs. You can change the order of the search listings, add or delete listings, and add commentary. The changes are stored in your Google account for future reference.

It’s a useful, time-saving tool if you search for certain topics repeatedly. Let’s say you’re looking for information on a health condition, checking stock quotes, or conducting research for a school project. With Google SearchWiki, you can eliminate sites that don’t interest you and move your preferred sites to the top of the results page. It’s sort of an alternative way to bookmark sites that you’ve found helpful.

You can also add comments, either as a review of a Web page or as a helpful hint. You can see how other people have edited the search results by clicking on the "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link.

If you perform subsequent searches while logged into your Google account, you will be shown your personalized search results. In order to see the search listings that the rest of the world is seeing – including the results of your SEO program – you need to log out of your Google account. (You can see if you’re logged in or out by looking in the upper right-hand side of the Google screen.)

Does that mean I can make my website rank higher by using SearchWiki?

Not really. As stated on the Google blog, “The changes you make only affect your own searches.” And you only see those changes if you’re logged into your account. It’s similar to how Personalized Search uses a Google account holder’s Web history to deliver more relevant results to that person. You can move your website into the #1 spot for a query, but no one else will see it in that spot. The only thing that gets shared with other logged-in users is your comments on individual search listings.

Google says changes made in the SearchWiki interface will have no impact on the traditional ranking of Web pages. However, it’s still a possibility that Google will use the SearchWiki data as a factor for determining organic search rankings. Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search products and user experience, tells The Wall Street Journal, that "some of these signals might be used to influence algorithms in the future." It’s not far-fetched to predict that some website owners will try using SearchWiki’s tools in an attempt to spam the search results, and Google will respond by coming up with a way to penalize those who used this spam technique.

Are there any privacy issues I should know about?

For starters, you can’t opt out of SearchWiki so there’s no way to remove the visual clutter unless you log out of your Google account. And when you make a comment about a URL, the comment, your username and, in some cases, your search query will be shown to other logged-in users (there’s no option for private annotation). There’s been a good amount of grumbling about these and other issues -- even prompting some users to create a script that would disable SearchWiki -- so you can expect Google will address these concerns soon.

Update 11/25/08, 12:15pm: In a Q&A with several Google team members, Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand.com got their answers to the following concerns about SearchWiki:

What is Google doing to prevent comment spam?

We’re no longer displaying any comments by default, which we think will help.

What is Google doing to prevent users from impersonating other users (i.e., what keeps me from signing in as “Bill Gates” and saying I love a particular website)?

This is a lot like what you see on the web already: anyone can choose to sign a comment “Danny.” It’s up to the reader to decide how to interpret this source.

At this time, there is nothing keeping a user from pretending to be someone else in Google SearchWiki. As Danny Sullivan suggests, it would be nice if Google instituted a verification process similar to the one used for Google Knol or, if the usernames of those leaving comments were hyperlinked to their Google user profiles.

So you're telling me that anyone can comment on anything, and there’s no filtering? What can I do to protect my brand?

In terms of advice, the need for websites to be vigilant about what people say about them – and on them – long precedes SearchWiki, and is as old as the web itself.

We’ve always been supportive of tools that allow people to better express themselves online, and SearchWiki is no exception.

At the same time, in cases where people express themselves improperly or illegally against websites, we’ve made simple tools readily available for websites so they can take action appropriately.

Google doesn't specify in the interview what the "simple tools" are, but we can assume it includes this online form which allows users to report a policy violation.

What this means for companies is that it's more important than ever to have a reputation management program in place. You should actively monitor what's being said about your brand and have a plan for how you'll respond to the buzz, be it positive or negative. Ignoring the conversation, or hoping it will go away, is not going to be an option.

Should I change my SEO strategy to account for Google SearchWiki?

Not at this point in time. If you follow a white hat SEO strategy, adhere to the best practices laid out by the search engines and maintain a useful website, you’ll continue to earn high rankings for the keywords used by your target audience.

Society Needs to Catch Up to Social Media, Part 2

This blog post won’t include links to the news stories because they’re a little NSFW (not safe for work) but if you search for “Caitlin Davis” or “Bono Facebook scandal” you should find them.

Personal Responsibility

Part 2 was supposed to be a serious blog post about the business uses of social media. But, like all true Web 2.0 content, the consumer is in control. Besides, I was having too much fun with these real life stories of “Social Media Gone Wild” not to run with this.

First, reader Dave T. brought it to my attention that I completely glossed over the idea of personal responsibility in Part 1, and he’s right. While the gist of that post was that we need to be forgiving of the silly things people have posted on MySpace and Facebook, I DO believe that the people posting those things need to be a little bit smarter. Dave suggested The Grandma Rule: “Don’t post it if your grandmother wouldn’t approve of it.”

Then I came across a story about Caitlin Davis, a New England Patriots cheerleader. She was fired after pictures from Facebook surfaced showing her holding a Sharpie and drawing on a passed out friend. There were some extremely inappropriate words and images drawn on him. In fairness, they may have been drawn by someone other than Davis, but the Patriots couldn’t keep her on as a representative or public face of the team/ organization.

What’s more surprising is that someone as media savvy as Bono can also get tangled up by embarrassing Facebook pictures. As a humanitarian and rock star, Bono has capitalized on technology and new media for decades. He should also be used to constantly living in the public eye. He should know better than to get caught on camera in a compromising situation.

When your life is on display to the whole world, you have to be careful how you present yourself. Ads for alcohol usually say “Drink responsibly.” Maybe Facebook and MySpace should warn users to “Post responsibly” on their upload pages. Either that or implement Vista-like security:
“Are you sure you want to post this?” “Yes.”
“Really?” “Yes.”
“Don’t say we didn’t warn you.” “I won’t.”
“OK. Upload complete.”

Then again, maybe we should just change the “Grandma Rule” to “Don’t DO anything your grandmother wouldn’t approve of.”


This is an ongoing series of blog posts about the effects of social media in corporate culture and society in general. Part 2 was supposed to explore the business applications of social media and discuss why IT departments need to be less restrictive with those tools. That will now be Part 3.

More Proof The Social Media Space Race Is On

The Marketing Executive Networking Group (MENG) just released the findings of its Social Media Survey with the lead message being “you’re not as far behind as you think.” And while this is evidenced by the two-thirds of respondents who classified their social media expertise at some form of beginner’s level, I don’t think you should take solace in the fact you are not alone. Rather, a closer look at some of the data reveals a real sense of urgency that marketers have about catching up in this emerging media before they find themselves left even further behind their competitors, let alone their customers.

Take a look at this: over two-thirds of these same marketers are increasing their social media budgets next year.

And this: over 95% of the respondents stated that it was critical or important to become proficient in the use of social media in marketing with more than half stating it was “Absolutely critical.”

So, now that the social media marketing race has clearly started, what you are doing to get ahead?

A Slightly Smaller Google-opoly

This morning the Official Google Blog announced that Google is terminating their partnership with Yahoo. The original agreement called for Google to supply ads to Yahoo and Yahoo partner sites if Yahoo did not have ads to display for certain search queries. From the time the agreement was announced, there were concerns that this would result in a search advertising monopoly for Google. According to Hitwise, Google accounts for more than 68% of the search market, and Yahoo makes up almost 20%. These monopoly concerns, and possible government antitrust intervention, finally resulted in the dissolution of the Google/Yahoo partnership.

Today’s announcement is just the latest chapter in Yahoo’s recent troubled history. Within the past two weeks, Yahoo has announced that it will lay off 10% of its employees, and that it will discontinue its Y!Live service next month. Yahoo’s stock value has dropped significantly since Microsoft’s failed buy-out earlier this year. Today’s news will almost certainly re-open those conversations and result in many more months of stories about a potential Microsoft buyout.

Search Engine Recap for October 2008

Here is a summary of search marketing industry news for October 2008:

Yahoo Search Marketing

Yahoo search marketing has announced some new features.

They are:

• Country-level targeting


• City and zip-level targeting (Up until recently, the geo-targeting functionality was around Designated Marketing Area (DMA). FYI, Adwords doesn’t provide zip-level targeting; they say 20 mile radius around zip)


• Targeting English-speaking US and Canada Internet users

They will be especially useful for those who want to target geo-specific audience.

AdWords

Adwords has announced two changes:

We all knew that CTR plays a big role to calculate the quality score of an ad by Adwords. Since the ad position in SERP affects CTR, ad in the first position would receive good CTR, and thereby its quality score goes up, while the ad in the seventh position may not get enough CTR and thereby its quality score remains low. Google is now going to change the quality score algorithm to take ad position into account. So while one ad in the top position might have a higher CTR, an ad in the seventh position with a lower CTR should not impact the quality score as much as it did in the past. This would allow all the ads to "compete fairly".

Second change is with the ads above the organic results. With the change, only ads above a certain quality threshold can be in the top spot, above the organic results. In the past, if an ad in position 1 did not meet a threshold but ad in position 2 did meet that threshold, then ad 2 would not be promoted to the top spot. With the new algorithm, it is possible for ad 2 to jump over ad 1 and appear above the search results.

We like both changes.

First Click Free

For those sites that have been having lot of useful content behind registration. Google’s “First click Free” suggests opening up the content behind the registration for Google to index and rank, and when the user clicks on Google’s search result and come to the site, serve the page, and require the user to register in order to be able to see other pages that are behind registration.

NYTimes works this way.

Google has been offering this to News content providers. Recently, Google made it clear it is allowed to be used for regular sites as well http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-click-free-for-web-search.html We encourage other sites to take advantage of this.

Google Webmaster tool

When we mention that we found “some pages that are reported as not found” by Google Webmaster tool, we often get asked by the clients where those pages are linked from, and we couldn’t give them the answer.

Now, Google webmaster tool gives those links. We love this!

This feature can be found in “Not Found" and "Errors for URLs in Sitemaps" reports

MSN Business Listings

MSN/Live has enabled us to add/update business listings.

There are multiple ways to edit the business listing

Go to maps.live.com. Search for a business. If you scroll down the search results, there would be a link “To add or edit your business listing, use the Local Listing Center.”
Go to maps.live.com. Search for a business. Click on one of the business and go to the details page. There would be a link “Business owners: edit listing”
Go to maps.live.com/localsearch/default.aspx. Search for a category. There would be a link at the bottom “To add or edit your business listing, use the Local Listing Center.”
Go to maps.live.com. Search for a person name. Click on “Remove my listing” on one of the results
Go to webmaster.live.com. Click on “Business listings”

Do we recommend it for others? Yes – especially for those having local presence.