Here’s what has been introduced in the last week – and what is expected to come out of Facebook’s annual developer conference, f8 and Google’s seemingly non-stop crusade to capture us all (and our data).

Recently Introduced – Facebook

Brace yourselves. This is a rather large list. Facebook has clearly been spooked by Google and has rushed to introduce new features to counteract those that Google+ has done better.

Subscribe – It’s now possible to subscribe to the public posts people make without becoming friends with them. The potential impact of this is big. If, like me, you’re a private person on Facebook but occasionally want to post or share something to a wider audience you can. This basically gives Facebook dual functionality. You can market yourself to your peers publicly, while retaining privacy amongst your closer, chosen circle of friends. As an example, I subscribe to MG Siegler, a TechCrunch writer I enjoy reading. He’d never friend me, we don’t know one another – but at least I can now see what he says publicly and he is safe in the knowledge that I can’t see the stuff he only wants to share with friends and family. Genius move by Facebook.

Smart Lists – One of the big advantages of Google+ was their Circles feature. The ability to create lists of people you follow and categorise them, then share certain bits of information with only those groups that would be interested. Facebook has long struggled with this concept, but they’ve learned fast and introduced Smart Lists. Now, based on your activity, they’ve divided your friends into lists such as Close Friends, your workplace and your school.

And, of course, you can create your own lists and add who you like to them, including those in other lists. So, for example, if you create a ‘Football Fans’ list you could add your best mate from your Close Friends list. Then share your football updates with ONLY that list, saving your other friends from the hassle of reading your inane ramblings!

Notifications – Facebook used to email you incessantly with Notifications. Now you can choose to receive only important updates and a Notifications summary email. For those who are very active on the network this is a Godsend. Ironically, Facebook emailed everyone to tell them they’d be getting less emails. Got to love the irony.

Updated News Feed – Facebook have also updated their News Feed, though not everyone is seeing it yet. This is usually the thing that causes uproar amongst its users but they plow ahead anyway, knowing full well people don’t like change but they accept it anyway. Gone is the choice between Top Stories and Recent Updates. They’ve been combined and Facebook now determines what to show you based on how frequently you log in.

If you log in 10 times a day, you’ll likely see the most recent updates. If it’s your first time in a few days, Facebook will try to show you the top stories from your friends in that time period, as well as more recent updates. How well this will work (and how well it will be received – or not) is yet to be seen.

In addition, some users are already seeing Facebook’s new Ticker – a constant, live stream in the right hand column of your friends updates as they happen. You’ll be able to hover over an update in the Ticker and a pop out will show relevant information, such as Bing map of the location of the person updating. You’ll also be able to see how many likes your content has gained as a Notification. It’s a really important change that will make a big difference.

Photos – Finally, Facebook have increased the size of photo thumbnails in the News Feed, making them better to look at and more inviting to click on. This is a feature I love, personally, simply because thumbnails are generally rubbish. The bigger the better.

Recently Introduced – Google+

On to Google+ then. There has been a lot of talk lately that G+ has been running out of steam. It’s nonsense, but just as Facebook have been introducing feature after feature in the war, Google has begun to roll things out in a bid to catch up or stay ahead, depending on your point of view.

Out of Trial, Into Beta – Google+ has been live for nearly three months in trial mode, but now they’ve opened it up to everyone in beta. Log into Google, go to Google+ and get started. Invites are no longer necessary. This should boost the membership base by millions. How many will remain active on the network will be determined by the features.

Search – It has bemused people why the search giant didn’t give the ability to search within its social network when it went live. Well, now they’ve rolled it out. You can search for people or topics using the new search bar – that means you can find content that may well have been posted a while ago. Something Facebook and Twitter struggle with hugely. And you can filter by ‘Best Of’ or ‘Most Recent’ too. This puts G+ ahead on that score, at least.

Hangouts – HUGE changes on the group video messaging front. Firstly, you can now go ‘on air’, which is essentially a public Hangout that allows people to watch a Hangout without joining in, or join if there’s room. Imagine the uses of this, especially from a business point of view. You can hold presentations, for example, hosted by your experts and watched by your clients. Wow.

There’s more. Let’s break it down.

• Screensharing: Allows you to share what’s on your screen – photos for example, with those you’re video messaging.
• Sketchpad: Allows you to doodle, sketch or draw in realtime together. Fun?
• Google Docs: This is interesting. You can share your documents with others as you chat, allowing real time collaborative work. The potential here for business is massive. When Google finally allows Google Apps users into Google+, this will be a feature that should be adopted widely in the business world.
• Named Hangouts: Create a public Hangout, title it Fashion, and garner an audience of clothing obsessed people as you discuss the latest styles from Paris, New York and London. Brilliant!
• Google+ API: Developers were given access to a very basic API for Streams recently, and now one has been introduced for Hangouts. Stay tuned for the no doubt incredible innovations in video messaging this will spawn.

So that’s what the two factions have introduced recently. What can we expect from Facebook out of f8 and from Google in the near future then?

Coming Up – Facebook (f8)

It’s (educated) guesswork at the moment, but rumours are flying about that include:

Facebook Music – The idea has been doing the round for years, but it seems that tomorrow will see the first official announcement of Facebook’s social music platform, which has been developed with the likes of Spotify, Turntable.fm and likely more. How it will work / look / be implemented we’ll have to wait and see.

Read / Watched / Listened Buttons – It seems that Facebook wants to add granularity to its sharing options. While now you have the Like button on millions of websites, it is rumoured strongly that these will be either accompanied by or replaced by more specific buttons, depending on the content. So if you’re watching a video you will no longer ‘Like’ it, you’ll tell people you ‘Watched’ it – [name] watched [video title] will being appearing in your news feed, instead of [name] liked [title]. Useful for Facebook’s data miners, no doubt, and I like the idea in principal but we’ll see how it goes. One other thing – there’s a less strong rumour that there will be a ‘Want’ button too – this will be big for online retailers. People browsing ecommerce sites will basically be able to tell friends and family what they want, and deeper integration could allow people to create birthday or Christmas present lists. Impressive.

Redesign – Various screenshots of a completely redesigned interface have been doing the rounds and it’s hard to give any of them any weight, so I won’t share them. Google (ironic) Facebook redesigns and you’ll see them for yourself. The fact that there’s a lot of smoke about this suggests there may well be a fire to go with it. Expect the usual uproar from users when it hits!

Coming Up – Google+

This section would perhaps be better titled “What’s Missing – Google+” but I’ll be kind and assume they’ll arrive eventually.

Google+ Brand Pages – Companies are clamouring for the ability to create brand pages on G+ and rightly so, as the features it offers suit businesses perfectly. Yet we’re still waiting for them and there’s no sign they#ll appear any time soon. Facebook has had them for years, even though they are relatively poorly implemented, even now. Google+ can really get one over in this area but so far, nothing. Come on, Google, this is exactly what businesses and agencies like Fluid Creativity need to open up more markets!

Google+ API – Yes, we have a basic one, yes, we now have a Hangouts one. What developers want is a more robust one that gives more possibilities. I can see Google’s problem though – they need their API to be as right as possible from the start. Facebook’s, after all, is pretty poor still.

Conclusion

Facebook had, I believe, become complacent such was their dominance in the social networking arena. Yes, they made tweaks here and there, trying to improve at all times. But the launch and fast evolution of Google+ has put a bee in their bonnet. I can’t remember a time when Zuckerberg and Co rolled out so many new features in such a short period of time.

And Google, burned by the failure of Buzz, Wave, even Orkut, went away, learned and returned with something that was, at first, better than Facebook. Now, as they battle one another for supremacy, they are innovating at a breakneck speed and we, the users (and online marketers), are reaping the rewards.

There’ll never be an eventual winner. Facebook is too strong and too well loved (despite what you may read) to be killed off or fade away like MySpace. Google+ is too well integrated into every other Google product and thus almost everything we do online for Facebook to see it off. They will learn to coexist.

Which one has the most users in 10 to 20 years time will be the one that listens to its user base better. There’s no clear sign on who is doing that right now.

One thing I think we can all agree on is that it is a wonderful show to watch.

The new product is a Chrome (and apparently Internet Explorer) extension called ‘Related’. It’s a nifty little tool. Once installed when you’re browsing around the web you will often see a little thin bar at the bottom of your screen offering content related to the page you’re on.

This could include maps, videos, reviews and other sites, providing you with yet more information to consume. Word of warning – you can easily get lost (not to mention lose track of time!) wandering around the internet going from site to site using Google Related.

It’s cracking, give it a go.

Slightly more serious for us SEO’s to consider is the tweak to the SERPs, specifically the display of site links. Previously site links were limited to a single row of four internal pages below the main search result before being improved to two columns of four links (See “The evolution of site links” – Official Google Blog). Now though, Google have given a massive boost to brands by making site links full size and increasing the number to 12. See below for our own:

These site links only when searching for [brand] or [brand + keyword] but as you can see from the image above companies now dominate the SERPs for brand related search terms, pushing competitors to just above (or even just below) the fold.

The ability to edit which site links are served up is sadly lacking but through Google Webmaster Tools it is possible to ‘demote’ up to 100 links. As Google admit themselves, however, that’s no guarantee those links won’t appear.

What it means for us is this. Web design and site structure now needs to be of a really high quality. Search engine optimisation must be geared towards earning authority and must take socialised results and all other ranking factors into account – if it wasn’t already!

When Google makes a change to search it is usually about making more money. How so in this case then? Well, there has been speculation that by pushing nearly all but one organic result below the fold and the only alternative to the brand result being the PPC ads, those looking for something other than the brand are naturally going to click those ads. That remains to be seen, but you can understand the logic of it.

Either way, for me it’s a good move and I anticipate spending quite a bit more time in Webmaster Tools from now on.

Finally, the rumour mill was turning full speed this week that Google had got into bed with Amazon and was returning Amazon product pages at the top of the SERPs, above even a brand’s own site and replacing Google’s own Shopping Results. The evidence was right there to see:

Courtesy of @SEOSherlock

As it turns out, the ‘problem’ was caused by the Chrome extension ‘Awesome Screenshot’ which was secretly inserting Amazon affiliate links into the SERPs. How Google let a spyware extension into their app store I don’t know, but if you’re seeing something weird in your results in future, try disabling your extensions and see if it still happens.

What could have been a story almost as big as Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility turned out to be nothing more than rogue extension messing with our minds. Still, it had the SEO world jabbering away excitedly for a few days.

http://www.gplus.to/

For shortened/vanity URLs like this: gplus.to/username

• Your nickname is the username
• Your Google+ ID is the long number in your address bar

To add a useful Google+ icon to your website or blog, download all of the icons here.

A Chrome extension, Facebook Friends Exporter, allowed you to transfer your contacts from Facebook to Google+ but Facebook have now blocked this. The extension has been around for a while but with the arrival of Google+, Facebook decided to block access to the extension. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of healthy rivalry eh?

Firstly, you need to click the ‘circles’ tab at the top of your feed and create a new circle, I called mine ‘invites’ (not very original, I know).

Click on your new circle and add the people you want to invite to Google+ by clicking ‘add a new person’. Once you’ve entered their email address(es), click ‘view stream for this circle’. You’ll then need to post something on to your ‘wall’ (for want of a better word) to share with the people you’ve invited in order for them to join.

As you can see, I’ve written, ‘Hope this works!’ to share with the people I’ve invited. They will then receive an email to view my post and join Google+. Make sure you keep the ‘email people not using Google+’ box checked. Job done!

Headlines like “SEO IS DEAD” aren’t particularly helpful or even informed. Nevertheless there have been plenty of them. Let me start by saying SEO is NOT dead. The introduction of Google Instant WILL change the landscape though.

When quizzed during a Q&A session at the Google Instant launch event, Google’s answer to the “How will Google Instant affect SEO?” question was simple – “ranking stays the same”.

Of course it does. Google Instant isn’t a change to Google’s algorithms. What it will do though is change the way people behave when they’re searching and it’s that that will impact search engine optimisation.

The general consensus is that generic terms – already highly competitive – will become even more competitive while traffic volumes for longtail searches will fall. This makes sense as instant results on every keystroke will likely lead to shorter searches.

This might sound like bad news but it doesn’t have to be. A skilled SEO should still be able to target and rank highly for just a couple of generic terms, giving them access to now higher search volumes.

However, those operating under a limited budget, those who previously targeted several longtail terms as a way of generating traffic, will now find it that more difficult to retain, let alone increase, traffic levels, at least in the short term.

At least, that’s the theory. The reality may be different and here’s why.

The number of people that will end up using Google Instant is limited – only those who can touch type will really benefit. If, like me, you look at the keyboard as you type you won’t notice the search results coming in until the full search is completed. What use is Google Instant to those people, me included?

In practice, none. I’ve tried it out and I can see the advantages but for me it didn’t really increase the speed of my searches as I had to keep looking up after every keystroke or two. No, the vast majority of people will continue to use Google in the normal manner.

The other thing to consider is the type of search. Let me quote this blog post I found, which gave a perfect example:

“This will only affect users who are searching in instances where the shorter or predicted terms match the users end goals. For example, if I am searching for “buy shoes online” and get as far as “buy sh” the top results are sites which clearly suit the needs of a searcher for “buy shoes online” and thus – this may work to the detriment of sites who rank well for “buy shoes online” as they may well lose traffic. In the case of a site targeting, oh – I don’t know – “seo consulting” there will likely be little affect if any. The searcher, looking for an SEO consultant, will find once they’ve entered “seo” that they are presented with Wikipedia and Google – sites that, while informative, don’t offer the services (or results) desired and thus – the searcher would be less affected. Once they proceeded on to enter the “seo c” the searcher would be presented with the results for “seo company” but I’m prone to believe that if the searcher wanted those results – they would have searched for it. For this phrase I’m confident we’ll see little in the way of negative affect from Google Instant.”

You could now be tempted to believe that far from killing search engine optimisation, Google Instant doesn’t affect it in the least. That would be a mistake. SEOs need to consider it when devising their strategy for a particular website, especially in terms of keyword research.

The decision to be made is choosing between targeting one or two very competitive terms for high volume traffic or continuing to chase 10-20 longtail terms with potentially reduced search volume but higher clickthrough rates. It will all depend on the industry and target audience.

Once that decision is made, through solid, thorough research, it is carry on as normal because “ranking stays the same”. And is that really any different to what we do now anyway?

I’ll finish up with this quote from another blog. After reading a lot of opinions stating what I said above – that longtail search volumes will fall as generic, shorter terms become more valuable (or relevant), I came across this:

“To conclude, it is more likely that predicted search suggestions will increase volume on the mid-tail and longtail…”

The reasoning was well explained and plausible too. So we’re back to square one!

Everyone has an opinion and until Google Instant has been taken up by enough people, used often enough and ultimately proved a success (or not), we’ll not know who was right.

In the meantime, it’s business as usual for SEOs, with just one more thing to think about. After all, “ranking stays the same” – it’s user behaviour that is (maybe) going to change.

Guest Blogging

A surprise for many was John Mueller’s assertion that he would “recommend putting that work into your own site, instead of creating content for other people’s sites.”.  The practice of guest blogging is commonplace – especially in online marketing circles – so it was quite an eyebrow raiser for Google to imply that adding quality content to other people’s sites wasn’t as beneficial as investing time in your own.  Rhys Wynne’s superb blog post has rightfully been getting a lot of attention over the past couple of days as he manages to cover so many of the reasons as to why there is no reason for Google to play down the beneficial aspects of guest blogging.

In addition to the points Rhys makes what I would say is that I could understand why Google may see a guest post as a ‘red flag’.  Were it not for the that fact the guest blogger could get something in return for their post (i.e a link to their own site),  I’d argue that they probably wouldn’t bother writing quality content for someone else when they could be better spending this time writing for their own site.  You can understand why this would be seen as a deliberate manipulation of links; the problem is that so many sites link to each other naturally in this manner I don’t see how Google could algorithmically differentiate between the two – so it’s hardly worth worrying about, surely?  There is an insentive to supply quality content to someone else’s site as if the reader derives value from it, they will be curious to see what else is on the author’s site.  Everyone’s a winner.  The overall tone of the interview was one of ‘write great content’ so this could have just been more Mueller towing the party line and there was certainly no implication that Google was ‘waging war’ on guest bloggers.  Snappy title though, Rhys!

Affiliate Links and Long tail terms

Google has a history of showing preference in their results to ‘name’ companies and brands so my initial thoughts were that it was refreshing to read that the recent May update has meant that sites who are well optimised for long tail key terms would take preference, regardless of the site’s authority.

On the topic of affiliate links, Zareen Kazim advised that in order to perform well in Google’s results, affiliate links should carry the ‘nofollow’ attribute.  To me, this would imply that Google is likely to see that sites containing affiliate links may not be of the same quality as one who’s links weren’t there for monetization purposes.

Now this is where the two conflict:  I run an affiliate site and have seen instances where my product page has outranked the site of the original vendor.  If search results are to be based around quality and relevance then surely it would make sense for my affiliate site to rank below the site I am linking to?  Wait – what am I saying??

As an example, I randlomly performed as search for a particular make of watch – bringing up the following results:

As we can see, creativewatch.co.uk (not my site!) is outranking the mighty Amazon.  I wouldn’t exactly describe it as a quality site and not one that as a shopper I would put much trust in.

So my feelings on the affiliate/long term issue are mixed.  It feels like Google are trying to give smaller vendors a chance against the Ecommerce giants, however through doing this they are gifting opportunities to affiliate sites who – it is insinuated – are seen to be lower quality.

On the point of performing better in search results if affiliate links are nofollowed – this is something I will be keeping a close eye on as up until now, all affiliate links on my site were ‘followed’ and rankings have been erratic to say the least.  I’ve seen fairly competitive terms fluctuate between the first page and the bottom 50.  It will be interesting to see if my newly nofollowed links will stabilise rankings.

Article Distribution

The question was put to the panel as to their opinion of article marketing sites such as eZineArticles and isnare.  Predictably, John Mueller trotted out the line that your time would be better spent making sure that your site has great content on it.  This is demonstrably not the case.  If I wanted to get a page on my site ranking and I had the choice between ‘adding some great content’ to it, or writing an article for distribution the answer is a no brainer.  Of course I’m not denying that your site should have content that people will find useful, informative or entertaining and there are countless examples of this – however to rule out article marketing as an effective means of site promotion is just daft.

Rather than going on a typically British tirade about how ridiculously cold it is I thought I’d try and lighten the mood with some nonsense about snowmen.  Here goes…

The Worlds Tallest Snowman

This rather intimidating chap is the world’s tallest snowman and was built by the (presumedly bored) people of Bethel, Maine way back in 1999. It took 15 days to construct the 113’7” snowman who was disappointingly named Angus by the locals.  Apologies to anyone reading this who’s called Angus – but you’ve got a rubbish name.

The World’s Smallest Snowman

This cute little snowman was created by (presumedly bored) scientists from the National Physical Laboratory in London. Unbelievably, the tiny fella is just 0.01mm wide (a 5th of the width of a human hair) and constructed from 2 tiny beads of tin using tools that were designed for manipulating nanoparticles. If they were really showing off they would have made him a hat but it looks like current scientific techniques can only take us so far.

Lego Snowman

Everyone likes lego. Everyone likes snowmen. This was always going to be a winner.

Pixar Snowman Short – ‘Knick Knack’

This wonderful short cartoon was made by some bloke called John Lasseter (the link is for those who don’t get irony) back in 1989 when Pixar was a fledgeling company.  I think it looks fantastic even by today’s standards and still has all the warmth and charm of the recent Pixar output.  A couple of interesting facts: apparently this film is one of Terry Gilliam’s favourite short films – and the music was done by Bobby Mcferrin!

Build Your Own Snowman

For those of you like me who are sick to the back teeth of this weather, here’s a lovely little website that allows you to build your own snowman from the comfort of your chair.  Don’t build anything too rude, now….oh go on then.

The Snowman in Dubstep

If you all enjoy Phil Collins as much as we do then you’ll no doubt love this bass heavy reworking of the theme from ‘The Snowman’:

Unfortunately our first post of the year might not be a happy one for some, as Google have pulled the rug out from under some of the best known SEO companies in the UK with a sneaky but significant change to the results page for the keyword “search engine optimisation”. You see, “optimisation” is one of those words the Americans spell a little differently, prefering an arguably more phonetically correct “z” over an “s”. And, apparently, Google think the UK should adopt this too, as they’re now default all searches for “search engine optimisation” to the results page for “search engine optimization.

[Credit to Hobo for the image]

This, understandably, delivers almost entirely different listings. In fact, at the time of writing, the two result pages have include only 2 of the same sites in their top 10 listings, in signficantly different positions.

Now, the UK result page for “search engine optimisation” has long been home to some of the best known SEO companies in Britain. In fact, you could argue that many have become recognised and respected precisely because of their presence on the first page for what has become a frightfully competitive keyword (bear in mind that most sites competing for “search engine optimisation” are, of course, being watched over and worked on by very experienced and capable search engine optimisers). A high position for this term is a branding tool, a selling point and an attention grabber, as well as what you might call a “vanity term”. Google’s own keyword tool is reporting “search engine optimisation” as recieving over 30,000 exact match searches per month locally, and so although some might try to seem nonchalant, this change will almost certainly feel like a kick to the crotch for those companies who’ve suddenly found themselves relegated to 2nd page or worse.

Meanwhile, Google’s own Search Engine Optimisation pages, along with a slew of companies who, with hindsight, wisely optimised for “optimization” as well as or instead of “optimisation” will be recieving a heap of new traffic while everyone else plays catch up, or until Google revert this change.

So far we’ve yet to find any other examples of Google Americanising our searches – “colour” doesn’t change to “color”, “aluminium” doesn’t change to “aluminum”, infact the single word “optimisation” only suggests you try “optimization”, rather than defaulting to that page. This seems like a very specific change and combined with the shoddy UK SERPs we’ve been seeing over the past few months  it seems that Google *really* doesn’t like us in the UK very much right now!

UPDATE 15/01/10 – Looks like this change has been rolled back for the time being – will be interesting to see how long this lasts!

So after a weekend boning up on Analytics trivia thanks to Google’s Helpcenter and Conversion University, James and I took the exam today. And guess what – we passed!

And here’s the proof – if proof be needbe – two brand spanking new Google Analytics Individual Qualification certificates.

Looks like they’ll need to be updated in 18 months, but that’s fine and dandy – I’m sure there’ll be plenty more to get our heads round by then! But in the meantime you can be confident that, when you’re dealing with Fluid Creativity, you’re dealing with a company that will not only help you to increase your traffic, but to understand and react to it.

“Google’s new Social Search will allow users to opt-in to having search results from content created by their friends on social networks around the web included in Google search results. Those friend connections could come from any number of sites that you and your friends have listed in your Google Profiles – but it won’t include Facebook

Microsoft announced today that Facebook status messages and other content from Facebook users with public profiles will soon appear in Bing search results. That’s a huge change for Facebook. Bing also announced Twitter search integration, which is live now.

Google announced a deal with Twitter today as well. So Bing has Facebook and Twitter. Facebook has Bing-powered web search. Google just has Twitter, no Facebook search.”

Clearly the search giants think there’s something in this social search thing, evidenced by their bickering over who gets what. There’s been a lot of talk about ‘real time search’ which looks at what people are saying about a subject right this second. Google currently indexes and ranks content based on how many links it has and how “established” it has become. Real time search produces results based on what links people are sharing right this second. Tech Crunch offered their two pennies on how a more socially driven system might work:

“For example, if a link to a post about healthcare reform on an obscure blog suddenly gains currency and is retweeted hundreds of times, that is a signal to perhaps rank that link higher in searches about “healthcare reform.” If people stop Tweeting about it, then maybe it goes down in the ranking… Tweets and other micro-messages will become part of results”

This is a key idea, and one that should sound as a warning sign that things will soon be changing significantly in search. This new method of ranking a website won’t only apply to content based sites; this will happen to your business. What people are saying about your business really matters and soon enough it’s going to either add value to your business, or take from it. Now is the time to consider how your business aims to rank well socially, and there’s probably no quick fix solution. Social isn’t going to just be about having a blog and a twitter profile, it’s going to be about ensuring your business gets as much positive feedback as possible because that positive feedback will make your site rank better, so how are you going to achieve that?

It’s no secret that this is the way things are headed. Already on Google’s search results is the ability to add a comment to be seen amongst your friends, how long until these comments are aggregated and analysed to rank your website?

It seems more likely that this system will be integrated into the SideWiki Project which Google announced today. It allows searchers to see what people are saying about a website right from their browser, and crucially it allows people to write a review about any site they visit – all indexed into Google’s mammoth database. Granted, the implementation of this idea is nothing short of terrible, but it shows a desire and drive for Google to get their hands on social reviews – real data from real people. They’ve made no secrets about analysing the data SideWiki produces, “we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed.” The headline on the Google Sidewiki reads “Help and learn from others as your Browse the web” – a more appropriate title might have been “Help us learn as you Browse the web”, since this is clearly an effort to get people ranking a websites value rather than an algorithm.

I guess that’s what this whole debate boils down to – who should rank a websites worth, Google’s algorithm or people’s ratings? By knowing and understanding how Google ranks a page, a whole industry has developed to help businesses rank better in the search results. Building links, using carefully constructed anchor text, link bait, and sometimes a few other shady tactics have all become a part of the industry. If current trends continue the switch over from this system to a social one might come as a shock to businesses across the world. Search will rank your site based on how well you perform, the reviews your site has received, and how many people are talking about you. It doesn’t look like there’s an easy way to manipulate that…yet.

Companies operating under this exact search philosophy already exist, and they’re already producing great results. Websites like Qype, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Delicious, Ciao (by Bing), are just a few amongst dozens of socially driven search engines that are springing up. Test the theory that these search engines are producing better results – specifically when looking for businesses, companies, organisations, and services, because they’re listening to what real people say about them. There’s certainly a blog post in comparing the results from these search engines, something I’ll put together in the future. For now I’ll just make my thoughts clear, in many situations these niche search engines produce significantly better results than Google does.

Don’t think for a second that Google will allow themselves to be left behind, they’ll be monitoring these trends closely. All of the changes I’ve mentioned so far are testament to the theory that they’re soon to change the way they operate significantly, and I predict it will happen much quicker than people expect. Those up and down arrows in Google’s search results might be cosmetic for the minute, but that data is flowing into Google’s servers and being analysed right now, they could utilise that data any time they want.

If we go back to Google’s stated plans – having your friends thoughts and feelings included in your search results. It’s a sign that you and your business had better make sure those friends are saying nice things about your brand and business; a personal recommendation is very valuable. And if all goes to plan, Google will soon be serving everyone personal recommendations.