google Archives • Page 7 of 8 • Identity Developments

June 30, 2011May 18, 2022

Making Google+ a Little Less Lonely

I admit it, I used a coworker’s Google+ invitation to sign up two days ago, and now I’m surrounded by … no one I know. For the first day I couldn’t even find anyone I didn’t know. I’m here to tell you, a social network with no social is extremely depressing and a little creepy. It was starting to feel a little bit like The Blair Witch Project, when they were separated and scrambling through the woods in the dark lost and alone. “I’m so … scared….”

Why was it so hard to find anyone else on Google+? How long would the typical new user really put up with this sad experience on a new social network? Not very long. But I’m a geek. And I want Google+ to win with an unreasonably strong desire.

Then I discovered the “Nearby” screen in the mobile app’s Stream. When viewing your Stream in the Google+ Mobile android app, just swipe to the right to switch to the Nearby Stream. At least now I could see comments from people I didn’t know physically nearby having conversations I didn’t really care about. But they were people — I’m not alone anymore!

Better than skulking around after random people, today I discovered that Mashable and The Next Web are on Google+ and followable! Following them led me to discover their writers, such as my favorite Mashable author Ben Parr. Ben is single-handedly lighting up the stream with Google+ chatter, Hangouts and generally helping folks practice their Google+ing. Now my stream has content in it, and I can see the appeal of Google+ a little more clearly. I’m more eager than ever to invite my friends so that I can use Google+ how it was actually intended.

Today Google+ is a mini-Twitter to me. Content streaming in from a couple of blogs I already follow in my feed reader. Not that interesting, but a novelty.

In the future, I can see Google+ as a maxi-Facebook. Google+’s sharing and communication features are superior to Facebook’s. Hangout is brilliant, and I don’t even like video chatting. The idea of “hanging out” with a group of friends near and far online over video somehow seems more desirable than video chat, even though I know it’s the same thing. Incorporating it into a social experience where I’m likely to be signed in most of the day anyway on my PC and phone, though, makes it somehow feel more interesting.

All I need now are my friends and family. And guess who has them: Facebook. No, you can’t add your friends directly from Facebook to Google+ since Facebook and Google don’t Like each other. But Mohamed Mansour developed a Chrome plug in that let’s you export your Facebook friends to CSV or Google Contacts, from which you can add them to your Google+ Circles. Way to go! I’m trying it out right now. With 400+ Facebook friends, it’s a slow process, but it’s working in the background so what do I care. Hopefully someone I really care about out of those 400+ friends will be on Google+ too.

LinkedIn also allows you to export your connections here http://www.linkedin.com/addressBookExport. I should do this anyway, but importing these 460-some connections into my Google Contacts now will likely yield a few more Google+ers.

Aside from those import options, I wait for invitations to open up again. Care to follow me? Jill Kocher on Google+.

Originally posted on Web PieRat.

June 28, 2011May 18, 2022

Whose Definition of Great User Experience?

Google’s SEO liaison and head spam cop Matt Cutts is repeating his mantra on user experience every chance he gets these days. But who’s to say what that great user experience consists of?

Search Engine Journal quoted Cutts at Inside Search:

“Google is trying to figure out what users want. And so rather than you as an SEO chasing after Google, and Google chasing after what users want, if you chase directly after what users want, then both you and Google are trying to get to the top of the same mountain in some sense.”

In principle, I agree. SEO changes frequently. Quick tricks that worked last year don’t work now. Stop looking for the easy way to game the engines and focus on what matters long term. But Cutts isn’t saying that SEO is dead (sigh). He’s saying that the kind of SEO that looks for loopholes to exploit is shortsighted and SEOs who rely on those loopholes are just asking to get smacked down by whatever the next Panda-esque update is.

But back to the focus on user experience focus rather than SEO. Put 10 people in a room and you’ll get 12 different opinions on what great user experience means for single site. I work with a lot of people who are certain that great user experience means AJAX-y navigation and personalization. As a user I tend to agree. However, if a site focuses solely on that lovely user experience and doesn’t provide a crawlable alternative, how exactly is that going to equate to great organic search visibility?

As with all SEO advice, the key is in moderation. You have to have both SEO and user experience. You can’t focus on one strategy, tactic, trick, fad, news item. SEO is a moderate blending of all the cool stuff you read in SEO blogs, filtered through your experience, webmaster guidelines, and analysis of your unique site’s data and business requirements.

So, abandon all SEO and read up on a bunch of UX books? I wouldn’t. Instead, think about what aspects of SEO might have a positive or negative impact on user experience and vice versa:

Keyword stuffing vs unique, engaging content
Shallow synopsis of other sites vs unique, engaging content
Link stuffing vs intuitive and relevant cross linking
Bait and switch tactics vs giving users what they expected when they came to your site
Spamming up forums and comments with irrelevant links vs thoughtful community participation

The core goals that SEO and search engines share still come down to valuing unique content, earned links and crawlable sites. These three values create a positive user experience. And that positive user experience increases the likelihood that you’ll earn more quality links. That’s what ethical SEO is all about.

Originally posted on Web PieRat.

June 21, 2011August 29, 2021

Google’s “Me on the Web” Isn’t Reputation Management

Google me I don’t understand how the press on Google’s recently launched “Me on the Web” tool classifies this feature as a reputation management tool. “Me on the Web” is basically an FAQ, a repackaging of pre-existing information and tools that Google hosts in it’s Account Help section and links to from users’ account dashboard. Regardless, this repackaging is an affirmation that searchers are increasingly interested in and concerned about the information associated with their names and email addresses. Searchers care about what others see connected to their names in search results, and they want to know how to manage it.

Here’s Google’s official stance:

We run into a lot of people who think that Google runs the web and controls all the sites on it, but that’s really not the case. The sites in Google’s search results are controlled by those sites’ webmasters.

Essentially Google is saying, “We don’t own this stuff, we just distribute it. Don’t blame us.” But searchers do. Hence the need for “Me on the Web.”

So what can the average human being do to manage their online reputation viewed through Google’s search results? Not much really, unless the content in question is confidential personal information. Google recommends:

Set up a Google profile: The best way to be sure Google sees the good side of you is to feed it the information directly.
Be knowledgeable: Google yourself and/or set up alerts. Googling yourself is hardly new, and Google Alerts have been around for years. But Google does add a nice twist to the equation here by offering a link to “Set up search alerts for your data” that pops up a prepopulated box with your name and email address to get you started.
Remove unwanted content from the site: Searchers who find skeletons in their search results are encouraged to remove the content themselves if it’s on a site or profile they own, or to contact the owner to request that they remove the content. If it’s a news source, you’re out of luck. If the content is from someone who is intentionally trying to smear you, you’re out of luck. If the site owner doesn’t want to or doesn’t exist anymore, you’re out of luck.
Request removal from search results: If you own the content, you can request that Google remove it from their search results. This option only works for site owners and under urgent circumstances. Google’s definition of urgent, by the way, doesn’t include your embarrassment at being photographed with a lampshade on your head at that party last weekend.
Post positive content: Push negative content lower in the search results by blogging, creating positive profiles on social sites like Twitter and Facebook, getting positive press, etc.

Violations of privacy involving personal confidential information like social security numbers, financial account numbers, images of your signature and instances of names fraudulently associated with pornography do receive special treatment, however.

If you find a page in Google search results that lists personal information such as your social security or credit card number, let us know using the links below. Google will contact the site’s hosting company to request that the page be taken down from the web. We’ll also take steps to remove the information from our search results.

It seems to me that Google’s “Me on the Web” is primarily a CYA tactic to stir up a little good press and deflect searcher frustration, not an actual concern about reputation management. It does little for the common concerns of everyday searchers, and leaves them with few options to combat minor but embarrassing reputation issues.

I can’t say I really blame Google for the stance its taking, though. There’s no sane way to mediate the world’s online tantrums to identify what is embarrassing “truth” worth returning in search results and what is just harmful maliciousness that doesn’t deserve to be seen.

You like potato and I like potahto,
You like tomato and I like tomahto
Potato, potahto, Tomato, tomahto,
Let’s call the whole thing off

Originally posted on Web PieRat.

June 15, 2011August 29, 2021

Mobile Search Trend on Google Mirrors Early Desktop Trend

I love this chart from yesterday’s Google event to announce Instant Pages, a new feature that preloads the first result in order to serve it instantly. My interest was immediately draw from the announcement itself to the promise of Google’s mobile search trends.

Mobile search is still young, but it’s growing at a rate consistent with desktop searches in the olden days. At least on Google.

The red line is mobile, and it’s ramping much more quickly than desktop search did. It’s unclear what volume of searches we’re talking about here. I suppose we’re meant to assume that the X axis is consistently labeled so that we’re seeing similar volumes, not just a similar trend line shape.

Once upon a time when desktop search was young, Google wasn’t the ubiquitous brand name it is now, and frankly there just wasn’t as much demand for instant knowledge powered by web search. Remember when you had a phone book and used it for something more than … well … filling your recycling bin? Today we all know Google, and we all want answers instantly. Search is the fastest way to fill that insatiable need to know. Mobile search is the always-available, in-your-pocket-or-purse, have-an-itch-and-scratch-it tool.

As more people trade in their feature phones for smartphones, mobile search will explode much faster than desktop search did. More people have phones, more people have their phones on and on them, and mobile feeds the instant impulse. Not only will the numbers of people who can access mobile search ramp more quickly than the number of people who had access to desktop computers, the mobile platform is more prone to an elevated number of searches per person.

It’s a fantastically exciting time for online marketers staring at the evolution of search from desktop to desktop and mobile. I wrote an article yesterday for Practical Ecommerce entitled: “Google Says Smartphone Sites Aren’t Mobile.” It’s highly unlikely that the smartphone version of a site will rank well in a search from a smartphone. Google prefers the desktop version with its juicy links and older age, etc. From an SEO standpoint, serving mobile searchers really boils down to the strength of your desktop site and the tactics you use to direct smartphone searchers to smartphone content. As silly as I personally think this is, and as inconsistent with Google’s stated goal of serving the right content to the right users, it’s reality. I’ll be very interested to see if and how Google adapts to serve the right version of mobile-oriented content to mobile searchers as the numbers of mobile searchers increases.

Originally posted on Web PieRat.