Google Introduces Real Time Search

I was so excited when I saw tweet from Matt Cutt about real time search of Google. I was wondering if Google implements features like live chat for “real time search” it will be mind blowing feature for Google Search Result.

Google has just launched real-time search integrated into search results pages.

Google real time search updates result from all around the internet. For example if you update information about Obama in twitter, yahoo answers or news articles it will instant updates in real time

Search. When they are relevant, Google will rank these latest results to show the new information immediately on the search results page. It works on mobile too.

You try searching for your favorite TV show, sporting event or the latest development on a recent government bill. Whether it's an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google immediately once it's published on the web.

Google’s real-time search enables you to discover breaking news the moment it's happening, even if it's not the popular news of the day, and even if you didn't know about it before.

How to check?

Click on "Latest results" or select "Latest" from the search options menu to view a full page of live tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling right on Google. You can also filter your results to see only "Updates" from micro-blogs like Twitter, Friend Feed, etc.

Google’s real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable them to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day. It gathers latest information from many social and news sites like twitter, friend Feed, yahoo answers and many more social media sites.

Google Analytics Individual Qualification

I have passed my Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ) test last week Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) Test, a new skills qualification program, and test your expertise in interpreting and using Google Analytics. The Google Analytics Individual Qualification is a proof of proficiency in Google Analytics that is available to any individual who has passed the Google Analytics IQ test. Google Analytics is a powerful tool for comprehensive analysis of web site traffic, and helps you optimize your site to get more traffic.

The test was bit challenging. More questions were focused on Adwords integration, domains and sub domains, filters, ecommerce tracking etc.

Before you start with your GAIQ test make sure you will go through Conversion University and Google analytics blog. The test covered all the topics in presentations. It is delivered online at your convenience, costs $50 and you have 90 minutes to complete about 70 questions. Successful completion of the test you will be awarded with the certificate as a proof of qualification.

Bing

A new breed of search engine has arrived. Microsoft recently released a new search engine called Bing. Bing search engine has just become publicly available and it has alarmed Google. It replaces Live Search and is available at www.bing.com.

Search Engine has become one of the fast acquiring media for finding information. Google is the most powerful search engine available. Bing is not different from Google, but some people have found its results stronger. There are slight differences. When you move your mouse towards right of any search result in Bing, it shows a preview of the web page.

When Bing understands searcher intent it will displays fewer results. Few of the search results are divided into categories. For example if you are searching for ‘Enrique Iglesias’, you will get results in categories such as songs, movies, biography, videos and news.

Search history of Bing will let you return to your recent searches of last two days. These features can even be turned off .Bing features a different background everyday. It loads its homepage quickly in web browser. Video search will let you watch videos without leaving the search engine.

Whether Bing ultimately succeeds or not, it will push Google to keep innovating search.

Can Bing be real challenge for Google?

Social Media Marketing

Social media optimization is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Now a day’s trend has changed, almost many people started using Internet for creating their own profile, making lot of friends, sharing knowledge, creating communities, groups and so on.

Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing sites.

Here are few social media sites.

· Digg

· Flickr

· Del.icio.us

· WikiHow

· Reddit

· BlueDot

· Technorati

· StyleHive

· Squidoo

· JotSpot

· Netscape

· Wetpaint

· LinkedIn

· Shadows

· Newsvine

· Yahoo! 360

· Wikipedia

· Furl

· Ma.gnolia

· Ning

· StumbleUpon

· Frappr

· Shoutwire

· Facebook

· MySpace

· 43 Things

· Yahoo! Answers

· YourElevatorPitch

· identi.ca

· Sphinn

· Reddit

· Twitter

· Bebo

· YouTube

· Plurk

Below are the some of the tips for starting out in social media sites.

1. Create a blog. Post interesting content on it.

2. Join Social media sites. Know what joining a network means.

3. Find like minded people and connect with them.

4. Read other peoples content, bookmark and link them.

5. Ask your network for advice. It shows you want to learn things to do it in systematic way.

6. Publish your content, announce it and ask your network to bookmark them. People will read it or bookmark or vote your content. You will have many followers in twitter.

7. Use tools as many as you can like stumble upon toolbar etc.

In SEO point of view social media optimization is very useful in link building, promoting websites, advertising, commenting, posting blogs, discussions and many things. This is more effective than other methods which are used for acquiring backlinks. The Social Media websites are being crawled by Search Engines frequently and so this is one of the best methods to acquire backlinks.

People are using this kind of site rapidly and they are very familiar to this site so we can take advantage of these sites for link building. Making more activities like updating blogs, news, press release and many more can attract more visitors to your sites. Due to this you can generate link popularity and it also enhances your brand image.

Google Earth 3D

Google Earth 3D is a service provided by Google to see online map, geographic information, distance between any two places and many more. The program originally called as Earth Viewer, maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe. It is available under three different licenses

1. Google Earth: Google Earth is a free version with limited functionality.

2. Google Earth Plus: Google Earth Plus includes additional features.

3. Google Earth Pro: Google earth Pro is a paid version $400 per year, which is intended for commercial use.

Google Earth was created by Keyhole.Inc, a company acquired by Google in 2004. The product was re-released in 2005 as Google Earth, available for use on personal computers running Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista etc. It is also available as browser plug-in released in 2008 for browsers Firefox, Safari 3, IE6 and IE7. It was also made available on the iPhone OS since October 27, 2008, as free download from App Store.

Google Earth displays satellite images of varying resolution from earth surface. Google Earth allows user to scan through cities, houses, roads at any oblique angle of our choice. The resolution is made available based on points of interest and popularity. But most of the land (except for some islands) is covered in at least 15 meters of resolution. In some countries, it allows user to search addresses, enter coordinates, or simply use the mouse to browse to a location.

For larger parts of the Earth surface, only 2D images are available, from almost vertical photography. For other parts, 3D images of terrain and buildings are available. Google Earth uses digital elevation model (DEM) data collected by NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). It can view the Gran Canyon or Mount Everest in three dimensions. With help of 3D views many mountains, including Mount Everest, have been improved by the use of supplementary DEM data to fill the gaps in SRTM coverage.

Many people using the applications are adding their own data and making them available on Google Earth. Google Earth is able to show all kind of images overlaid on the surface of the earth and is also a Web Map Service client. Google Earth has the capability to show 3D buildings and structures (such as bridges).

Google Earth helps user to find out exact location, distance between two places, and many more on the Earth. If you are planning to visit any new place and you are unknown to that place, then nothing to worry, Google Earth is always there for our rescue.

Impact of video in Google Ranking

Do you like to watch video rather than to read text?

Obviously, most of us prefer watching video, since it assists in works which can be multitasked. Pictures will be stored in memory for long term compared to text. While reading text there might be possibility of few words getting skipped from your mind, hence it helps us for better understanding of video. Moreover, people feel lazy to read. As everyone knows “Action speaks louder than words”.

Online Video is a good online resource across Internet. As people are reading very less, text is turning out to be just stuff for the search engine spider bots to pick up on, not what your visitor wants. Through online video, a person can provide information about his or her products more effectively hence they can keep existing market value and raise profit level. It consumes a lot of time to write text or to make your company's online image. On the other hand, it only takes few seconds to establish your online image and it also enhances your brand image. But not all the internet videos are good; one bad video can spoil your company image. Bad web video does not get essence of your business. Bad video has bad sound, bad lighting it makes visitors turn away from your site. Online video is a tool to sell your product and service in market, if video is good you may get better prospects with whom you can pursue business.

Your video should be professional. Without professional or engaging video, your prospect may feel that he has wasted his time with you. So don't shoot your business image with poor video. Instead you can ask professional video makers and marketing people. Good video provides more visitors than text or even flash animation.

Good Internet marketers understand Web Site Stickiness; properly done web site video makes your prospect to stick around your business web page for a long period to understand your product and services which we are offering as well as engage them with the site content to continue business relationship. Once you have their attention, you can make direct contact or provide direct information to prospect. It will promote your business growth. Properly done web site video gives you an unfair advantage to dominate your competitor who lacks video.

Even leading search engines like Google, consider video to have higher engagement potential than static content. Even site's external link popularity may not be great. Just putting up videos can make your business at the top of search results.

For all these reasons, web site video is important for businesses to offer video content on their own sites, both for improved visibility in the search engines and to attract their ideal customers.

Google Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate is a percentage of time spent on single page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the landing page.Bounce Rate is a way to measure the quality of traffic coming to your site. It is almost accessible in any web analytical tool. It is easy to understand, hard to misunderstand.

Bounce Rate is a measure of checking quality visits. If Bounce Rate is higher than 50% it indicates that site landing pages are not relevant to your visitors. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy. There are chances your page might not be useful for visitor. It can increase Bounce Rate of your site.

If Bounce rate is lesser than 50% it indicates that site landing pages are relevant to visitors. It means landing page is providing enough information to visitors what they are looking for.Some times what happens is visitors often leave browser windows open when they are not actually viewing or using your site. It also makes difference on Bounce Rate. You can minimize Bounce Rate by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and add that you run.

1: Measure the bounce rate of your website.

This will help you to understand what percent of your website traffic is actually engaging with your site.

This Index Tools report shows that 30% of the site traffic above is bouncing. It means 30% of visitors have not even spent 5 seconds, or see more than one page.

There are two exceptions: 1) You have only one page website 2) Your webpage is more informative where visitor gets all the information they need and leave.If you are not in above category you need to pay very careful attention to this metric.You will understand better why your conversion rate is low.

If you have made changes over the last x amount of time then watching a trend of bounce rate is a sure way to know if the changes you are making are for the better.

2: Measure the bounce rate for your traffic sources.

This is another way to Measuring your Bounce Rate on your traffic source, you can figure out if some sources of traffic are sending you particularly terrible traffic compared to others.

3: Measure the bounce rate of your search keyword.

Most of the visitors are coming through search engines. You can find out quality of traffic coming from the search engines. In Click Tracks report you can notice that each key word / key phrase performs differently, and it also differs by search engine. It helps to take a dump of top keywords and bid on them with PPC campaigns.

Search uses many ranking factors, if you want to get good rankings on search engines; you should make sure all the factors are in your web pages which turn to good rankings.

I hope this post made you clear about Google bounce rate

Welcome 2009

Wish you all a Happy New Year

Well, As we know last year so many changes happened in SEO field.

Search Engine Optimization is a R&D process. According to search engine algorithm SEO process gets changed. SEO depends on search engine and their algorithms. When I think about SEO future so many questions arises in my mind.

How much important SEO’s are in online marketing?

What will be SEO’s future?

What changes will be in 2009?

As online marketing field is booming in high competitive world, SEO is required. SEO not only helps make your website popular, it helps to improve business as well as sale.

There are few areas where I feel changes happening in 2009.

Focusing on metrics that matter

Understanding the SEO does in fact provide value

Shifting of Budget towards SEO

With the tough economic times throughout the world, online marketers and SEO needs to prove their importance even more on 2009. Only ranking reports are not enough, but it should be mentioned organic ranking do provide some valuable insight on how website is progressing on keyword level.

SEO Related Search Engine Metrics will continue for 2009

Non-Branded search engine

Bounce rate

Time spent on site

Subscribers to your content

Site search

In 2009, we are going to see more marketers, managers looking towards SEO to promote their products, services and brands. Sure they are going to cut marketing budget, but the smart ones will re-allocate pieces of this budget to the more cost effective SEO option. It only makes sense and here's why:

SEO is cost effective

SEO generates traffic to your site

SEO can mean long term visibility

Click-Through Rates

Due to difficult economic times online marketers may face with shrinking budget. This means marketer will decide smarter ways to spend this money. More companies are going to allocate set amounts of their online marketing budget to SEO. Now SEO has proven that it is effective and business owners have taken note.

Large companies are learning about the value of SEO as part of their online marketing strategy and as part of their overall marketing strategy. The greatest part about SEO is that, when done properly, SEO is a cost effective way of driving business to your company and improving your bottom line.

As the internet grows and develops, one thing is becoming evident. We cannot ignore the fact that social media is taking over the internet. It's no longer enough to have just a one way communication between product owner and customer. It needs to be a 2 way conversation.In these economic times, marketers are not ready to pour money into sponsored and Pay Per Click efforts. How many of you feel that you have a proportional budget between SEO and PPC?

I think SEO is a relatively cheap and cost effective way of promoting your products, your services or your brand. When marketing budgets are cut, SEO may just be what the doctor ordered. SEO is the service where you no need to pay like PPC. Strong organic visibility once achieved can provide a fantastic return on your investment.