Apparently there’s a serious (remote-access) security hole in certain PHP setups that’s gone unnoticed for over 8 years. According to SMF, the patch isn’t complete yet either. Full explanation and easy way to test if your site is vulnerable is all there at php.net.

It’s a difficult thing to pull off well, though, especially for small or medium-sized businesses because a great website, video, whatever the vehicle is, will usually require a whole lot of time and attention to have the desired effect. And you need the right persos or people to pull it off. It will likely also require a lot of input from those primarily responsible for “running” the business, and time is usually in short supply.

Taking the time to create and market great content, though, is the best way in my opinion to diversify your efforts and be successful in the long-run. If you can’t do it yourself, get someone or an agency that you trust that can take the lead, recognize what unique value your business offers and build a campaign around that, using you {the business owner or expert} as a source the subject or source of information.  Kind of like the Delta video the article used as an example. In my opinion, the video wasn’t the greatest, but I do think it was interesting and it’s gotten over a million and a half views. And it’s at least a good example of the type of thing businesses can do to better engage, brand, and convert.

In his book “I’m Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Google Employee #59″, Douglas Edwards explains that Matt Cutts, now Google Distinguished Engineer and ambassador to webmasters everywhere, hates spam and took upon himself the task of improving Google’s ability to filter out porn from search results in the company’s early years.  Many years later, the fight against spam is still headed up by Mr. Cutts as the search giant tries to provide high quality search results for its users from a much larger and, perhaps more unwieldy, world wide web. Recent updates to the way their systems identify and deal with spam, like the over-optimization “Penguin” update, demonstrate how Google intends to makes sense of an estimated 55 billion web pages, many of which are in a daily struggle to be found by motivated Google searchers.

Spam may be an ugly word, but as far as Google is concerned, it applies to your web site, page, or other content if you are actively trying to manipulate your way to the top of search results for particular queries. As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly said at a 2008 National Association of Advertisers conference, “The internet is fast becoming a ‘cesspool’ where false information thrives” and that the solution to all the disinformation is brands.

In a world of disinformation, which is the future, brands are the solution. Brand affinity is hard wired and fundamental to the human condition – who you trust and who you don’t. People want real value, real information, real leadership and messages of hope… The fundamental way to increase your rank is to increase your relevance.

 

I believe quality of content has always technically been the dominant factor in relevance according to Google but, in recent months, it seems we have been witnessing the implementation of a next-gen effort to recognize “quality” as the Google of the future emerges. As advanced machine-learning and Artificial Intelligence make search engines more capable of understanding human queries, it may be more wise than ever to appeal to the searcher instead of chasing the algorithm.

One way to do that is through Google Plus. This fairly new addition to search results connects a name and face to content, along with a note vouching for the author’s popularity. In an official Webmaster Central Blog post about the “Panda” update, Google Fellow Amit Singhal linked high-quality very closely to trust. The more Google trusts your content the more likely, I believe, it will be willing to recommend it to its user base. And vice versa. Content that is connected to a verified author trusted enough to be in several others’ circles of friendship or acquaintance is the opposite of web spam.

It’s also more manageable. If Amit et. al. are to make science-fiction a reality, I imagine an immense amount of computing power, even more than is currently employed, would be needed to run such an advanced heuristics system. And if millions and billions of new pages and Tweets and updates are posted to the web every day, how do you efficiently sift through all that and determine what is high-quality and what is just spam? I like Webmaster world user “brinked”‘s theory:

Here is what I think. The web is getting really big. The web grows exponentially each and every day. That is a ton of webpages. google has made efforts that it has bragged about in spidering/indexing this entire web world with such speed and efficiency. google is policing all of these sites and not to mention using all these resources in doing so.

If I was google, I would absolutely aim to remove the trash and shrink the web so that it is easier to rank websites and form algorithms that are more accurate.

 

I obviously have no idea if that can even be considered a rough idea of Google’s approach to search moving forward, but it seems to me to be a plausible idea. If it is, then, whatever you plan to market through a Google portal, must be as relevant, trustworthy, and high-quality as possible. And while I think it’s likely ingenuitous individuals continue to game the system, I believe it will be not only more rewarding but easier to play by the rules. Unfortunately, I don’t believe these very recent updates are returning higher-quality search results yet, but they are very recent and will probably be tuned further.

Conclusion:

Get on Google Plus. Even if you don’t use it as a Facebook alternative or feel like Google is coercing you into their social network, use it for your business as part of your online marketing strategy. Establish yourself or business as a trusted source of high-quality content that interested searchers will find relevant and valuable. If the engineers at Google are as good as we are led to believe they are, then you really will be able to focus on your business and we are in for a much less stressful world of online marketing.

Step 1. Login to Facebook > Account Settings

Step 2. Click on “Mobile” (in the left-hand sidebar area)

Step 3. Add Mobile Phone

Step 4.  Add the number of the cell phone you have connected to your Google Voice number and click on the link for Facebook to send your confirmation code.

Step 5.  After receiving your confirmation code, hit “cancel” NOT “confirm”.

Step 6.  Add Mobile Phone (again) – only this time, enter your Google Voice number.

Step 7.  Enter the code you received on your cell phone and click “confirm”.  That’s it!

These instructions may not be perfect, I’m writing this from memory. The caveat is, of course, that Facebook seems to record the number of your main cell phone instead of the Google Voice number in your “Mobile” settings. If you’re just using your phone to verify a Dev Account, you can just remove your phone number from your Mobile settings.

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while now. The title of Brick Marketing’s recent blog post caught my eye one day and prompted me to put a few of my thoughts down regarding this question. In fact, I didn’t even read the blog post right away, the title alone got my wheels turning bringing up thoughts I’ve had here and there about the big deal being made over “Social Media”.

“Find us on Facebook!”, “Follow me on Twitter!” are two little lines or badges that it seems every website and commercial must now include. It’s no wonder “facebook” and “facebook login” were the top 2 searches in the United States in 2010, according to Experian Hitwise’s recent report. But it seems to me that, a lot of times, local business owners and Webmasters decide they need to create a Facebook page or a Twitter feed and don’t even know why.  Maybe they see all the big players push this relentlessly on TV and feel a need to follow suit. Then there are all the articles from SEO bloggers, like Stamoulis’ or this one, that talk about “Social Media” so they figure it must be important. But is it really that big of a deal? And even if it is, should your business adopt a “Social Media” campaign?

Brick Marketing says “Social Media” is important because it could replace search. Of course Stamoulis also says “this will not happen overnight or even at all” and then makes some arguments about how “it could over run search as we know it” so I’m not sure what his position really is, but I guess it doesn’t matter because his point is clear – “Social Media” is important. And his “why” is explained in 10 quick points. But before diving into those, I think you have to understand what “Social Media” is.  And yes, I’m capitalizing “Social Media” and putting it in quotes for a reason.

In my opinion, “Social Media” has come to be defined narrowly in the minds of webmasters and small business owners as Facebook, Twitter, and maybe LinkedIn, Digg, and some of those other “social” websites they’ve heard of whose “like” and “add this” buttons so cutely infest websites everywhere, but nothing else. It seems that we believe socializing (not caps or quotes) is some new phenomenon that started happening on the internet in just the past couple years. Moreover, we seem to all believe that socializing only happens online and, even more ridiculously, we seem to believe socializing only happens on these mega-websites. But nothing could be further from reality and diving into “Social Media” marketing without thinking about how people really socialize, and more importantly, how your business fits into your targeted audience’s social world won’t get you any more sales or make your website any more popular.

And you also have to understand that “media” is plural. What is the medium your targeted audience uses to socialize? Is it really Facebook? Is it really Twitter? Do they really care and will it really make a difference in sales if you’re tweeting all the time or updating your Facebook status? Or is your audience best reached in the real world at local car club meets, book clubs, churches, or music venues? And don’t get me wrong, the World Wide Web is hands-down the best tool you have at your disposal and many social groups these days have community-flavored websites like forums, blogs, wikis, etc. that you can use to introduce or build trust for your business.  Remember that like most social interactions, a campaign like this must be handled extremely artful, which really makes social media marketing such risky business – something I don’t think a lot of us realize sometimes). If you’re careless or make a bad impression your prospective customers will not easily forget that, and you may be cast out from their society.

Remember that social media marketing, like any social interaction is very complex, and extremely sensitive. Try to think of your business like the 14 year-old kid whose family just moved him across the country and has to go to a brand-new high school.  Do you have a strange haircut or were you saavy enough to adopt the local styles? Do people make fun of your accent or are you clever enough to make it work? Were you foolish enough to ask out the hottest girl in your grade or do you know your boundaries? Be careful to handle things right, because your reputation and social success depend on it.

In some cases, you may not even want to do any social media marketing. Some business owners do not have very good social skills and would be best keeping a low social profile and just sticking to arms-length business. Unless they can leave all social interactions to someone with more finesse, a social media campaign can have a serious negative impact on business. For example, it might leave a better impression on new visitors to your website to see no Facebook Like box at all, than to see that only 4 people like you.

In summary, I believe social marketing is all about understanding your target audience’s culture and the place your business has or can potentially have in that culture.  And the medium whereby that socializing occurs is limited only by your creativity, targeted audience and budget. For many people that medium may be Facebook or Twitter, but be sure you take the time to at least make an educated guess and consider other options that might work best for you.  And now on to my reaction to Stamoulis’ points:

1. No Manipulation

Social media cannot be manipulated like search results can. You either communicate or you don’t.

The problem with this point is that social media can of course be manipulated. In fact, it’s much easier to purchase 1,000 Facebook likes or ask all your friends to subscribe to your Tweets than it is to spam your way to the #1 spot on Google’s search results. And just like SEO, it’s still quality that matters in social media marketing. Just because someone hears you doesn’t mean they like what you’re saying.

2. Less Spam

Search results have a tremendous amount of spam that you usually have to open before you find out it is. Social media spam is at a much lesser amount, for now anyway!

I disagree. I think search results are pretty decent and depends if you consider 3 updates a day from your local liked restaurant as spam or communication. But I think this is apples and oranges.

3. Big Brands Using It

Every major big brand has adopted social media as a part of their marketing plan which is only going to grow stronger over time.

Which brings me back to my long point about “Social Media” marketing versus social media marketing. Major brands have been using different forms of social media for years. One medium is sponsorship. Sponsoring sporting events, charities, and countless other social groups and gatherings has been in use for years – what can we call it if not social marketing? TV advertising is another medium of social marketing. Different ads are geared for different groups of people and television has long been an integral part of America’s social life and interactions. Who doesn’t talk about their favorite TV show with friends at work or find a soft spot for the company sponsoring their favorite animal rescue shelter? So, in my opinion, this is not a reason why “Social Media” will over run or replace search but why you should consider it as part of your marketing strategy.

4. Nose End

Even though search is still very young social media is even younger. With the power that social media has built up since its initial rise who knows it might surpass search marketing over time.

Again, I think comparing the two is kind of a moot point and I’m not sure what is meant by “nose end” anyway lol.

5. More Options

With social media you have many different options on how to reach out to someone and communicate. Search only gives you two, organic and PPC.

Yeah, this is a good point. Social media encompasses so much while search is just one way to market. But the two must not necessarily be separated when marketing online.

6. Real Time

Social media is happening now. No publishing an article and waiting 2 months for someone to find it. Social media gives you instant interaction with your audience.

Definitely one of my favorite parts about internet forums. The same can be said about offline social marketing. But even on social sites, being able to search for past conversations and other useful, stored information requires searching. Anyone who has ever spent any time on an online forum asking questions should be familiar with the suggestion – “search noob!”. Many social sites have a search system or even integrate a search engine like Google as a benefit to their community as all knowledge is not available in real time.

7. Human Factor

You know that with social media you have the ability to communicate with a human immediately. With search you communicate with a link and to some people that human factor has its weight in gold.

This immediate human communication is also what makes social media marketing so risky and dangerous as people can tend to be very easily offended and difficult to please. Like I said, a social marketing campaign must be handled with extreme care and understanding of the society you are trying to become a part of.

8. Search Ability

Many of the social network platforms are starting to have the ability to really be able to search right on their platform for a variety of different reasons. Some even pulling in direct search results right through their social networking platform.

Of course by “social network platforms” Stamoulis is referring only to mega-websites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. There seems to be a lot of talk of a competition between Facebook and Google, especially with Facebook overtaking Google as the most visited website in 2010 and if there is one way I see search engines disappearing it’s if these mega-sites, but especially Facebook, integrate their own search system (Facebook is kind of doing this with Bing) to let users search the internet while inside Facebook, for example, and still remain inside Facebook much like a contemporary search engine does.  People wouldn’t have to ever visit Google.com because the browsers on their new computers would come preinstalled with a Facebook toolbar instead of a Google or Bing toolbar – or some kind of replacement. Users would just log in to Facebook and search there and Facebook would keep them trapped inside their internet – again much like Google or any other search engine does now. Facebook would have to make this more obvious to users and it would probably take some gentle hands to help everyone make that transition, but I could see it happening. Google made a good defensive move in developing Chrome, but Microsoft has a huge advantage in the popularity of its operating systems.

9. Less Expensive

(In some cases): When you start to compare certain pay per click costs to market a website in the search space it can get really expensive. With social media all you really need is time spent communicating online.

Except time is money. PPC is, in my opinion, far more inexpensive than developing a good social media marketing campaign and applying it in the field than picking a few key words and making 3-liner ads. The problem is that PPC can be so ineffective. “You get out what you put in” kind of applies here. But once again, PPC should not be entirely left out of the social media marketing Venn Diagram.

10. Brand Building

The social media space really allows you to build your brand online by showing your audience you have a personality and knowledge not just a web page of content.

This is what all forms of social media let you do and what makes it unique from search. Search engines are a media used to find things. And while branding is becoming more and more possible through search, marketing through various social media is all about brand building. You establish trust, reputation, and a position in your targeted audience’s world.

This has been a long piece, but again, something I’ve been wanting to discuss. Please let me know if you find any typos or grammatical errors. All comments (minus spammers) are welcome. Thanks for reading and thanks to Nick and Brick Marketing for bringing up the subject!

Anyway, the author of the article makes a case against using vertical navigation in website design. The main reasons he gives are:

1. It Discourages Information Architecture
2. It Wastes Prime Screen Real Estate
3. It Doesn’t Conform to Real-Life Reading
4. Fly-Outs Aren’t as Usable as Drop-Downs
5. It’s Not as Successful, According to Studies
6. The Few Benefits are Negligible

He does say that there are some exceptions, but still thinks in all those cases a horizontal navigation menu could do just as well. I agree with a lot of what he says in the article, but the thing that most sparked my interest in writing this quick post is his first point and, particularly, the supporting example. I’m too lazy to download and re-upload the screenshot and don’t think they would appreciate me hotlinking the image, so you can check it out for yourself, but he talks about a website he designed many years ago for an industrial plastics company. The site is of course “old-fashioned” – very simple, not flashy, with zero “Web 2.0″ influence. Kind of what you expect from most early 2000′s sites for this type of business. And, as is the case with a lot of old-fashioned websites, the design features a left-hand vertical navigation.

Now in this case I think a vertical-navigation, particularly one on the left-hand side of the page works and is maybe even preferable to a horizontal navigation. It might not be trendy or win any web design awards, but what industrial plastics website should? My guess is that visitors to this type of site are probably going to be very unconcerned about being wowed with the latest javascript effects or mood-setting photo, but will be looking for specific information about a very specific topic as fast as they can get to it. The author’s 2001 website has specific links to one level-deep pages that are specifically listed on the homepage’s left-side vertical navigation. And, as he points out in his article, some studies show that our attention is usually drawn to the left-hand side of a page. (He also contradicts this later with another study and without any explanation, but I haven’t checked out the other studies so I’m commenting mostly from my own observation here than anything else). Anyway I think that, ironically, that type of what is bound to be very dry, and not-fun website that most of us will never have to visit is one of those cases where a vertical, left-side menu might work best.

Another one of the author’s main points against vertical navigation is that drop-downs are better than slide-outs, but I’m surprised he fails to address various vertical accordion menus made possible by javascript (there’s a lot of popular jQuery and MooTools scripts out there).

Thanks to the author for that article which looks like it took a good bit of effort and time to put together.

Does anyone else think it was just a little funny that Google published this article on Election Day? Maybe it’s just me but much like a lot of the political speeches and ads we were hearing right before the elections, what can be important about this article is what is not said. I wonder exactly why the Search Quality Team felt the need to release an article on this, but at least part of the reason must be because multiple domains with identical content is a tactic employed by a loooottt of online publishers, particularly in the competitive markets that they mentioned in the article. And I meant to comment on this blog post earlier, but never got myself around to it.

Anyway, as Torner and Kasper state:

Some less creative webmasters, or those short on time but with substantial resources on their hands, might be tempted to create a multitude of similar sites without necessarily adding unique information to any of these. From a user’s perspective, these sorts of repetitive sites can constitute a poor user experience when visible in search results

The key here is unique information. In my experience, because of the weight search engines give to domain names, having multiple websites dealing with similar topics but with unique content can greatly increase your chances of customers finding and selecting your website while searching. Google Instant shows us that searchers aren’t really considering their experience of a site based on what they see in the search results pages. Instead, users are selecting the first result as fast as it appears.

I am not saying to ignore Torner and Kasper’s advice and create multiple websites with essentially the same content. While these types of results are not weeded out as much as the Search Quality Team would have us believe, it is smarter (and less annoying) to have multiple quality websites that deal with niche areas of the same content – much like Google suggests. And like they say, it takes a lot of resources – mostly time – to do this, but when done correctly it can give you that many more chances that a potential customer visits your website instead of your competition’s.

If Google’s Instant hasn’t been enough to annoy you lately, maybe their new update to it will. Now with Instant turned on, you’ll notice that the #1 result for your Google search, whether a sponsored result or not, will have a little blue arrow to the left of it. I read somewhere that this has been implemented in the spirit of Instant aiming to cut the time down from when a searcher begins typing to when they select their destination. That may be so as I’m sure searchers will be unexplainably drawn to that little blue arrow and, just as Instant does, this update will also give even more power to that #1 ranking on Google’s infamous first page of results. I’m willing to bet that no one, especially not your average searcher that Google is focusing on, is able to restrain their eyeballs from checking out that little blue arrow. I’ve also read somewhere that this is a navigation enhancement – and it’s true that you can use the arrow keys to drop the arrow to the #2 result, #3, and so on, then press “Enter” to select the web page – but grandma and grandpa aren’t going to be smart enough to think of that. The effect then, is even more power and attention, and probably even more visits, to that #1 spot.

When Google’s search results are presented, there is an overload of information and text and this new arrow will be used to draw in the bewildered Googler to the result with the pretty blue arrow next to it. This will work much like the sponsored results and the new Google Maps tags that use color to call the attention of the searcher and separate themselves from the sea of white, text, and blue links. My opinion is that the update just seems like more bad news in terms of search engine quality as searchers might get to their first destination fastest, but are even less likely to consider the several other options available. The several other options are part of what makes the internet and search engines great – letting the user get a glimpse of the huge amounts of information that exists out on the web and allowing them to decide what seems to work best. If Google wants to start narrowing things down and becoming a “decision engine” or maybe even a prediction engine, then I guess we’ll see what happens, but I think micro searches are best left to smaller websites with a more specific subject matter. Either way, this means one thing for webmasters and SEO’ers – fight, fight, fight for that #1 spot.

As you may have noticed, Google just added a new functionality to its search page (on most browsers for U.S. users for now) that they’re calling “Instant”. What does it do? Well, if you go to the Google home page (google.com) and search for something you’ll see that not only are there search suggestions in text form being auto-completed for you, but now different pages from Google’s index of search results are being displayed as you modify your search query. I won’t post screenshots since you should be able to check this out on your own – unless you’re on a mobile phone (Google says it plans to support Instant on mobile soon- which I assume means the mobile version of Google) or your internet connection is too slow (yes, this Instant search “enhancement” is going to eat up more of your computer and internet resources). The good news about that is that you have the option to turn off Instant or it will turn itself off if your internet connection is too slow.

Google claims that Instant makes searches faster, predictions smarter, and results instant, cutting the average time of a search down by 2-5 seconds. Well, after a few weeks now of using Instant regularly here’s my take on it:

For one, Google Instant is kind of a fun tool for Webmasters and SEO’ers to see their web pages appear in Google search results on the fly using a variety of keywords and phrases. Say I’ve got a bicycle shop in Albany and I’m running an SEO campaign using the key phrases “Albany bicycle shop”. Using Google Instant, I can type in “Albany bicycle shop” or stop one word short and only type in “Albany bicycle” and see if my website is coming up anywhere on the first page. Maybe, instead, I think people are more likely to search for “bicycle repair shop in albany ny” or just “bikes”. I can test all of these queries out and see Google’s first page results without having to take the time out to hit the “enter” key. There’s just something fun I guess about seeing the results change one word or phrase at a time without having to commit to one particular query.

But this is where I think the benefits of Google Instant end – at least for most of us in Albany. Because search results display for each letter or word that is entered on the fly, results tend to bias the broadest search query. For example, searching for “Albany bicycle shop” with Instant will first show results for “Albany”, and then the new results for “Albany bicycle”, and then finally, the results for “Albany bicycle shop” – if the searcher even gets that far. One reason Google may be able to claim that Instant cuts down the average search by 2-5 seconds may be because the average searcher is a very slow typer and/OR isn’t exactly sure how to search for what they want. In my experience working with Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa and even people my age, the majority of us are really bad searchers. What I mean by that is that most of us have a hard time finding what we are looking for when using a search engine. That may be one reason the auto-complete search results are useful to Googlers as it makes it easier to find something, even when that something is only a loose match to what the searcher really has envisioned in their mind. I believe Google Instant encourages this trend of broad searching and broad selecting that really limits the results a Googler could otherwise enjoy when searching.

Why is this bad for Albany? The same reason it is bad for any local business optimizing for customers on the internet. The big players who can afford campaigns to appear highest on Google results for the broadest search terms – like “bicycle shop” – will be more likely to be selected (and selected faster) than the Mom and Pop places who optimize for “bicycle shop in Albany”. The effect of this bias isn’t as apparent with my example of bicycle shops, but for search terms like “lawyers”, it becomes more obvious. Not only is this bad for local businesses in Albany and other towns, but it is also a disservice to the searcher as it homogenizes search results even further. In fact, that is probably my chief complain of Google Instant. What saves the day here is Google’s ability to display some search, map, and auto-complete results according to your IP address, and therefore, your geographic location. Otherwise the average searcher would be seeing a lot more national brands and results coming from bigger cities far, far away.

And while Google Instant is helping out the slow typers which probably constitute the majority of searchers, it is aggravating those capable of faster words per minute. When you know exactly what you want to search for and would rather type out an entire phrase and hit “enter” and are capable of doing it within a second or so, Google Instant will only get in your way. Results on the fly can’t load fast enough and a fast typer will find themselves aggravated at not seeing the terms they type right away as the Instant script struggles to catch up. But again, there is always the option to just turn Instant off.

If this review seems overly negative I apologize, because I don’t mean for it to be. It just seems to be a big waste to have developed something like this when Google and the way search engines function in general still need so much more improvement. I’m also irritated that with Instant on, the faster, more seasoned searcher will now take a little longer to find what they want because of the slower page loading and results trying to display on-the-fly. I am a little upset that Instant seems to homogenize results even further, and makes Google act more like a directory of search terms, instead of displaying results for searches created organically. I’m still not sure what it means exactly for advertisers as an ad impression will now be counted every time it is displayed in Instant’s on-the-fly results. Maybe Google will be able to claim a higher ad impression rate as they further develop their lucrative Adwords and Adsense programs.

What I do think it means for webmasters and businesses in Albany is that they should pay attention to this subtle change. My advice would be to focus a little more on optimizing for the popular search terms that Google auto-complete provides instead of the search terms you think up since Googlers will supposedly be choosing these faster and more frequently.

There’s nothing new about any of this. Google has probably been accused millions of times – both formally and on Webmaster blogs and forums everywhere – of manipulating its search results and of maintaining or approaching a dangerous monopoly over the Search market (the most recent number seems to be 65%) and maybe the internet itself.

So why is this worthy of discussion? Well, whether or not you consider that to be an illegal monopoly or to what extent you believe 65% is an accurate number, chances are if you do any business online you have felt the pressure to appear in a visible spot on Google’s search results. You have probably received countless offers from SEO companies to purchase their services and appear on the first page of Google’s search results. And you know that when you’re searching for the closest coffee house you Google it – and so do your customers.

In my experience, the 65% number seems to be on the conservative end. At least that has been the case for my client’s Albany lawyer website this past month according, again, to Google’s Analytics service. In this case, about 55% of all of our traffic came from organic searches using Google with about 65% of our traffic coming from all search engines combined. So if we do the math … 55 is what percent of 65? (55=65x). 55/65 = 0.84615385. That means about 85% of all of our organic search traffic came from Google. This number, at least for us, is a little more on track with a 2008 prediction by Jason from Mahalo.com that predicted 90% of search engine searches would come from Google.

But the most recent figures from comScore show that in July, Google actually lost some U.S. search market share to Yahoo!. That might sound like something to think about until you read that Google’s share dropped from 66.2% to 65.8% and that Yahoo “jumped” from 16.7% to 17.1% (Bing stayed put at 11% flat). This is also part of some back-and-forth that has been going on since the beginning of 2010 when Bing saw a little jump to 11.7% and got everyone talking about the Microsoft-Yahoo! partnership, bla bla and how Google was losing market share. While Yahoo and Bing may finally be grabbing a crumb out of Google’s search market share every now and again, this doesn’t look so worrisome for Google who’s search market has grown something like 60% in the past 2 years (see the comScore website).

So why is this important for you as a business owner in Albany or anywhere else? Well obviously if you’re looking for visitors or customers to find you online, you should probably optimize for the biggest group of searchers. I also think it’s important, or maybe just interesting, to be aware of the control Google has over your business. Make sure to stay up to date and follow their official blog for any changes, news, and updates to their services. Remember that Google is constantly adding to and adjusting their services (and so are Yahoo! and Bing) and the way their search engine works. The way Google searches worked and appeared a few years ago is very different than today. Even just a few months ago Google rolled out a big change to their search algorithm that they called “Caffeine“. This change has dramatically increased the speed at which your web pages can appear in Google’s search results and how site ranks. I’m actually pretty blown away at how fast pages are indexed. It has also included a focus on social media Tweets and other news items. There have been updates to the aesthetics and the physical way results are displayed on the search page, new sponsored map listings are available, and on and on.

Just make sure to keep up as best you can if you plan on doing business online. Don’t sit back and think everything will continue to work the way it did back in 2000, 2005, or even 2009 because chances are that it won’t. If you need help optimizing your website on Google, Yahoo!, or Bing or maybe just want an additional opinion, I’d be happy to sit down with you.

- Chase