With Google focused on integrating Google+ with other services, and Facebook switching over to the much more archival Timeline, there is clearly something of a war brewing between these two Internet behemoths. Facebook, with over 990 million users worldwide, is far and away the social media leader, and as we’ve discussed, it is also very popular with prospective students.

Google+, however, has made inroads, and with Google’s other products, Google Analytics, YouTube and Gmail most prominently, it is well positioned to continue taking bites out of Facebook (particularly since they’ve incorporated social circles and social reports). The question is: should Facebook fight back by launching its own search engine?

They can definitely benefit from such a development, even if Google has an almost 65% market share worldwide. For one thing, search is the top dog when it comes to advertising dollars (Google still generates most of its revenue from search), and there is enough evidence to suggest that Facebook would be able to offer advertisers something of an unparalleled service. After all, people now spend more time on Facebook than all of Google’s services, combined, this includes YouTube and Gmail (which is open all day on my computer).

Clearly, if Facebook created a stand-alone website, similar to Google’s, it’s very possible that their results page would be much more personalized. The wealth of information that the social media giant knows about its user base (let’s be honest, they know everything about you), would also likely lead to higher CTR and conversion rates for advertisers. It’s doubtful, however, that they would go this route, as it runs counter to the way they’ve worked in the past.

It’s much more likely that they will implement a more elaborate search function within their existing platform. There are reports, in fact, that Facebook is currently focusing a lot of resources on improving the site’s current search capabilities (which is understandable, it’s frustrating to say the least). A drastically improved search function, combined with the vast social (and public) information available on Facebook, would be something very unique, and it may very well create something of a universal platform, a sort of portal through which users experience the Web. To that end, Facebook was awarded a patent last year called, “Visual tags for search results generated from social network information”. This is how it was described:

Search results, including sponsored links and algorithmic search results, are generated in response to a query, and are marked based on frequency of clicks on the search results by members of social network who are within a predetermined degree of separation from the member who submitted the query. The markers are visual tags and comprise either a text string or an image.

Clearly, something like that, something that incorporates a powerful search engine with a user’s social world, can compete with Google.

To hear more about the social network’s vision for the future, check out Facebook’s Bret Taylor talking at the Web 2.0 Summit:

What Will a Facebook Search Engine Mean for Higher Education?

When it comes to education marketing, a Facebook search engine may be a very powerful tool. For one thing, a majority of colleges and universities are already on Facebook. A Varsity Outreach study on 150 American colleges and universities in 2011 showed that 79% of schools had an admissions-specific Facebook presence (this was up from 65% in 2010.) We’d be surprised if it didn’t increase in 2012, as Facebook has been testing a new feature that is directly related to higher education: Groups for Schools.

This feature will let colleges and universities create a separate and specific community limited solely to people with active school email addresses. Essentially, this lets students and faculty create or join specialized groups within the site for specific classes, clubs and more. Should a powerful search engine be integrated into this mix, it means a whole lot of social information will suddenly be easily searchable by prospective students (of which 83% would view the Facebook page of a school they were considering). It also means that schools really need to implement and maintain a comprehensive social media plan.

Stay tuned for more developments on this topic.

What do you think about the idea of a Facebook search engine?

CATEGORIES: Blog

Tags: Facebook, Google, Search Engine News, Social Media

As it often happens in the Google world, companies bought by the search engine giant are often gobbled up and incorporated into an existing Google service. An example of this would be the shuttering of Urchin Software in the beginning of the year. Well, the latest voluntary “casualties” are PostRank and PostRank Analytics, which are being shut down by Google on May 1st, 2012 (today).

Here’s what PostRank founder and CTO Ilya Grigorik (who is now a Software Engineering Manager, Google Analytics at Google) had to say on the PostRank blog.

“It is bittersweet news that we remind our users that PostRank will be sunset on May 1, 2012. The sweet part is that Google Analytics now allows you to conduct much of the same measurement and analytics that you’ve enjoyed through PostRank. We invite you to access the new Social reports within Google Analytics. Learn more about the new Social reports in our blog post. As of May 1st, PostRank.com, PostRank Analytics, Top Posts widgets, and Google Reader plugin, will be taken offline.”

(Note: he never mentions the “bitter” part, though maybe it’s obvious.)

If you never used it, PostRank had developed a number of free tools to help make sense of social engagement data on the Web. This included plugins (the now defunct Google Reader plugin among them) and RSS feeds that would score and rank posts based on their discussion, linking patterns and social interaction. It was, basically, an easy way to find popular posts.

Google’s new social reports will be taking its place. The reports will allow users to analyze a number of different factos to see how Social impacts your company, or in this case your college or university. These social reports include:

• Sources: As your content is shared and people come to your site, it’s important to understand how visitors from different social sources engage with your site.

• Conversions: Shared content URLs become the entry points into your site, driving traffic from social sources. Measuring the conversion and monetary value of this traffic will help you understand the impact of Social on your business.

• Pages: People increasingly engage with, share, and discuss content on social networks. It’s important to know which pages and content are being shared, where they’re being shared, and how.
• Social Plugins: Adding Social Plugin buttons to your site (for example, Google “+1″ buttons) allows your users share content to social networks directly from your site. Your social plugin data shows you which content is being shared, and on which networks.

What do you think about this?

CATEGORIES: Blog

Tags: Google, Google Analytics, Google Products, Search Engine News

Google has launched another service its Gmail and Google+ subscribers: Gmail Meter.

Activated on April 19, the new analytics tool enables Gmail users to find out more about their email habits. According to the Google blog, the Gmail Meter report will offer information on the following:

• Volume Statistics show you the number of important and starred messages, the number of people who sent you emails, and more. Volume statistics can be very useful in determining how you are using email efficiency tools like Priority Inbox.
• Daily Traffic gives you an estimate of when you receive messages and when you send them during a given month. For example, in the graph below you can see how the peaks in my “Sent” curve indicates that I write emails in spurts.
• Traffic Pattern lets you get a sense of your overall email activity over the past week.
• Email Categories tells you how you are managing your Inbox. In the pie chart below, you can see that the majority of my emails are labeled. My Inbox is tiny compared to other labels which indicates that I keep a lean and mean Inbox.
• Time Before First Response shows you how long it takes you to reply, and how long it takes others to reply to you. By looking at this chart, I can infer that I reply faster than others I communicate with.
• Word Count tells you whether you are writing long emails. The example below shows that most of my emails are shorter than 200 words.
• Thread Lengths help you understand whether you participate in long conversations resulting in long threads. Top Senders and Top Recipients help you identify who you communicate with more frequently.

Check out this video to find out how to set up Gmail Meter:

What do you think about this new Google service?

CATEGORIES: Blog

Tags: Google Products, Search Engine News

It looks as if Google’s secure SSL search is catching on, as Firefox looks set to adopt it. Here’s what Johnathan Nightingale, Director of Firefox Engineering, told Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land:

“We are currently testing the change to use SSL for built-in Google searches in our Firefox nightly channel. If no issues are uncovered, it will move through our Aurora and Beta release channels before eventually shipping to all our Firefox users. This will include migrating the changes to our non-English version of Firefox, as well,” he said.

Firefox is hoping the change will help make searches more secure and cut back on the ability of publishers to know how people found their sites in Google. Firefox users who have changed their default search engine from Google will not see the change.

Google’s SSL search has been the default for signed-in users at Google.com since October. So, if you’re signed into Google, your searches will end up at the secured https://www.google.com site, with results also coming back to you via a secured https page.

For a visual on what it looks like, take a look at this screenshot from our search of the keywords “Higher Education Marketing”. Notice the extra S after the http:

This is what Google had to say about SSL search in October:

“As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default search experience for signed-in users…This change encrypts your search queries and Google’s results page.” 

So what does it mean when they say it will make things more “secure”? Essentially, SSL secure search makes it harder for outsiders to “eavesdrop” on what you’re searching for (think of it like a secure connection when buying something online). Secure search means that it can only be seen by Google and the searcher. There are, however, exceptions, most notably Google’s advertisers and users of Google Webmaster Central.

Google has estimated that SSL search accounts for 10% of total searches, but some reports show SSL searches accounting for more than double that figure.

What do you think about Firefox adopting Google’s SSL search?

CATEGORIES: Blog

Tags: Google Analytics, Google Products, Search Engine News

As we’ve discussed many times, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for colleges and universities looking to make the most out of their marketing and recruitment strategies and online presence. However, what is becoming clear is that the quality of SEO efforts may soon be more important than the “quantity” (substance over style, in other words), at least according to Google’s Matt Cutts.

Cutts spoke at a SXSW panel about search engine optimization and revealed that the company may soon have a new strategy when it comes to determining rank. There is an audio clip available on Search Engine Land, but here is a rough transcription of what Cutts said:

“Normally we don’t pre-announce changes, but there is something we’ve been working in the last few months and hopefully in the coming weeks we hope to release it. The idea is basically to try to level the playing ground a little bit. So all those people who have been doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly doing their SEO – compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we are trying to level the playing field a bit.

We try to make the GoogleBot smarter, try to make our relevance more adaptive, so that if people don’t so SEO we handle that. And we are also looking at the people who abuse it, who put too many keywords on a page, exchange way too many links, or whatever else they are doing to go beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.”

He didn’t mention, however, how Google would decipher quality content from overly optimized sites, nor did he mention how the latter would be punished – one would think, though, that a lower rank would do the trick.

So, does this mean you have to rethink your SEO work? Not exactly. SEO best practices are not set in stone, mostly because search engines will often update the manner in which they crawl sites, and the standards their crawlers are looking for. This means that SEO campaigns are generally long-term affairs, with continuous keyword research and on-page and off-page efforts. Changes, therefore, are par for the course.

Clearly, though, it’s becoming more important for your college or university to produce great content (and to make sure SEO campaigns are well run and properly thought out). We’ll just have to stay tuned to see what Google has in store.

If you’re curious about over-optimization, here is a Google video on the topic:

What do you think about this news?

CATEGORIES: Blog

Tags: Google, Search Engine News, Search Engine Optimization

Things are getting ugly in the ever merging search engine/social media sphere, with news that Yahoo is suing Facebook for allegedly infringing on their advertising, messaging and social networks patents.

The allegations claim that Facebook is infringing on patents involving messaging, news feed generation, social commenting, advertising, click fraud and more (for a grand total of 10 patent infringements). Yahoo has a series of patents in this realm, including a patent related to personalized ads and patents allowing users to customize shared information (meaning privacy control).

The lawsuit goes a little further than that though. ”Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo’s patented social networking technology,” the company’s lawyers alleged in the suit, filed on Monday.

“To build a successful website, users need to have been easy access to many functions and tasks such as messaging and privacy options. The website owner needs revenue through functions such as advertising. All of these functions involve Yahoo innovations,” the lawsuit said, claiming ultimately that, “without Yahoo’s achievements, websites such as Facebook would not enjoy repeat visitors or substantial advertising revenue.”

If this all sounds unexpectedly catty and after-the-fact, there’s a reason: Facebook is in the IPO process, and, with billions of dollars on the line, it is unlikely to want to get down into a dirty litigation battle.

There is a precedence for this kind of behaviour from Yahoo, as the company also sued Google for patent infringement just as the search engine giant filed its IPO. Google settled with Yahoo (offering 2.7 million shares), but as Business insider reporter Jim Yarrow writes, there was a reason for that, “The reason Google settled with Yahoo is because Yahoo had a legitimate case on its hands. Yahoo bought search engine Overture, which was the first to come up with auction system for paid click ads in search. In his book on Google, “In The Plex,” Steven Levy writes, Google “adopted” Overture’s idea of pay per click, as well as Overture’s auction system.”

The case is far less open and shut against Facebook, which makes all of this that much more interesting. We’ll have to stay tuned to see how the social media giant reacts.

What do you think?

CATEGORIES: Blog

Tags: Facebook, Search Engine News, Social Media, Yahoo

Much has been said about Google’s controversial changes to its privacy policies, but new data is suggesting that even with these changes, Google remains the leading search engine in the US.

A new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that:

• 83% of American internet users say they mostly use Google
• 6% say they use Yahoo most often

All other search engines (including Bing) accounted for 6% , with another 5% of respondents claiming that they did not favor one search engine over the other.

While it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to see Google in the number 1 spot — it has after all been there for years — what is surprising is the way that it has cemented its position in the top spot. A 2004 Pew survey had  the number of respondents who used Google most often at 47% (Yahoo was at 26%!). This represents a massive increase.

The question now, however, is if searchers will be turned off by Google’s new privacy rules, which will pull personal information from Google Plus and use search history and user data to target advertising. According to the survey, close to 75% of respondents do not want their search engine of choice to tailor ads with personal info and data. Something has to give.

It’s important to remember, however, that at the end of the day, this is Google’s bread and butter. Their search engine is the heart of a system that generated $36.5 billion in revenue last year. It’s unlikely, therefore, that they will scale this back. It will be interesting to see if any backlash occurs, of it there is any room here for Google’s rivals to slither in.

The Pew Search Engine 2012 survey, by the way, interviewed 2,253 adults, of which 1,729 responded via the Internet. The results based on Internet users have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.

CATEGORIES: Blog

Tags: Google, Search Engine News

As seen in the Evolution of Search video, Google has always been a work in progress, with constant innovation and change. A couple years back, Google incorporated  Social Search, hoping to create a search engine that understands the people using it, and the relationships they have with other users. They’ve now taken another step in this direction with the introduction of three new features:

• Personal Results
  This is a search feature that lets find information just for you (such as Google+ photos and posts). Think of is as a search engine of all the things you have shared or others have shared with you. Only you will be able to see this on your results page, making it similar to the search function in a gmail account.
• Profiles in Search
  This feature, which work in autocomplete and results, enables you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following.
• People and Pages
  This feature will help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks.

Here is an introductory video from Google explaining Social Search:

And to learn more about how Social Search works behind the scenes, including the choices and control you have, check out this video:

What do you think about the new features to Google’s Social Search? Do you think you’ll use them?

CATEGORIES: Blog

Tags: Google Products, Search Engine News

As seen in the Evolution of Search video, Google has always been a work in progress, with constant innovation and change. A couple years back, Google incorporated  Social Search, hoping to create a search engine that understands the people using it, and the relationships they have with other users. They’ve now taken another step in this direction with the introduction of three new features:

• Personal Results
  This is a search feature that lets find information just for you (such as Google+ photos and posts). Think of is as a search engine of all the things you have shared or others have shared with you. Only you will be able to see this on your results page, making it similar to the search function in a gmail account.
• Profiles in Search
  This feature, which work in autocomplete and results, enables you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following.
• People and Pages
  This feature will help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks.

Here is an introductory video from Google explaining Social Search:

And to learn more about how Social Search works behind the scenes, including the choices and control you have, check out this video:

What do you think about the new features to Google’s Social Search? Do you think you’ll use them?

CATEGORIES: Blog

Tags: Google Products, Search Engine News

Google is providing a bit of a blast from the past today, releasing a video that highlights some of the key milestones in search over the last ten years. It seems like Google has been around forever, so it’s easy to forget that Google.com was not even registered until 1997. We’ve certainly come a long way since then.

Particularly interesting is the effect that September 11th had on the creation of Google News, and the way the search engine giant has continuously adapted to the changing online landscape. Search, as this video makes clear, has to be progressive. This Google video, therefore, also seems to be something of an introduction to future changes in the pipeline.

The company posted this on their blog:

“Our goal is to get you to the answer you’re looking for faster and faster, creating a nearly seamless connection between your questions and the information you seek. That means you don’t generally need to know about the latest search feature in order to take advantage of it.”

Check out the Google Evolution of Search video:

Google also released a Search Timeline (Click here to see a larger version of Google’s Search Timeline):

Please visit the Google blog for more information on Google’s Evolution of Search.

What sorts of changes do you foresee in the future of search? Let us know your thoughts on the evolution of the search engine.

CATEGORIES: Blog

Tags: Google, Google Products, Search Engine News