Posts Tagged ‘search engine’

By BARBARA ORTUTAY - AP Technology Writer

Tech heavyweights Microsoft and Google are acting like a couple of feuding starlets in a public online spat over – wait for it – patents.

It’s not the first time Microsoft and Google have gone at each other’s throats, nor is it likely the last.

But with Twitter and blog posts, the dispute is playing out in public in a way that wasn’t possible in 2005, when lawsuits over an employee Google hired from Microsoft revealed the bitter rivalry between the two.

Now, Google is accusing Microsoft, Apple and others of launching a “hostile organized campaign” against its Android operating system, which runs smartphones that compete with iPhones, BlackBerrys and Windows-based mobile devices.

At issue are thousands of patents from Novell Inc., a maker of computer-networking software, and Nortel Networks, a Canadian telecom gear maker that is bankrupt and is selling itself off in pieces. Last month, a consortium that includes Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. prevailed over Google Inc. with a $4.5 billion cash bid for the Nortel patents.

Google lost out after a strange bidding process that included what published reports said was an offer for a billion times the mathematical constant “pi.”

“Their response seems to be to whine about the process,” technology analyst Rob Enderle said.

Enderle was referring to a scathing blog post by Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, who wrote on Wednesday that Microsoft was banding with others to acquire “bogus patents” to make sure Google can’t get to them.

Read more: http://www.bradenton.com/2011/08/05/3401626/google-microsoft-patent-spat-escalates.html#ixzz1UFxALPi5

I’m sure if you own a website that in your mail,  just about everyday is a company selling Search engine optimization services. What I find interesting is when you check on their own sites they are often not even ranked or indexed in Google.  No wonder they have to spam our email boxes. They also usually promise to put you on the first page of Google in short order.

If any of these companies violate one of  Google’s terms by using black hat methods you pay the ultimate price by being penalized, suspended or even banned from Google’s index.

Just be careful and do your research on these companies. Ask them for websites they have optimized and check out their ranking in Google. Do keyword searches for the websites and see how they have done. Call the companies to verify they actually did the SEO work they claim they performed.

Search engine optimization should be incorporated in any website from the beginning. There are many techniques and search engines often change their policies. A good web design and hosting company offers ongoing optimization and keeps track of your web traffic statistics. This is a value added service and is usually billed along with your hosting.

Be careful and believe the old saying “If it sounds too good to be true it probably is”

What Search Giant’s Social Foray Means Behind the Scenes

By: Dave Williams

Google+ is gaining users faster than any social network ever before. After many stumbles, Google has finally built a social network that delivers value to consumers. That makes Google+ a bigger competitor to Facebook than anything we’ve seen.

So far, a lot of Google+ coverage has debated its value, and examined the network from a consumer and tactical standpoint. Less scrutinized is the way the launch of Google+ could end up enhancing the competitive positioning and value of Google’s search business, giving it an unprecedented view of consumer interest, social graph, intent data and conversion data.

What you want vs. what you like
The biggest difference between Google and Facebook right now is that thanks to search intent data, Google knows what consumers want. Facebook, on the other hand, has a very clear understanding of what users like and who they know. Google+ is the first step for Google to close this gap. It aims to build out a complete profile of Google’s users, giving Google access to profile data, likes, interests, and friends.

Google+ integrates across all of Google’s products to make sharing easier and more relevant, but also to add value to Google search. If Google can incorporate data from the social graph to deliver more relevant results, it will have a product competitive with Bing’s Facebook integration . This is of critical importance in order for Google to maintain search market share and growth by improving relevancy and personalization of search results vs. the aggressive challenger Bing.

In my opinion, Google is interested primarily in building user profile data to deliver more relevant and personalized search results with better, more relevant advertising. Studying Google+ and collecting even more consumer data empowers the company to integrate its data for a better consumer experience and advertising across all their products, from search to social to mobile and even to email.

Engagement and ROI

One major issue with Google+ is the absence of brand and corporate pages. If Google wants to compete with Facebook, these pages are crucial. Facebook works as an advertising platform because it goes far beyond traditional display. Rather, it’s an engagement platform where brands and advertisers interact with consumers.

Adding brand pages to Google+ will finally give Google a branding engagement platform. Right now, Google’s big revenue business is search, which relies on clicks to measure ROI and advertising success, whereas Google+ can offer a branding platform where the campaign goal is engagement rather than immediate ROI.

Once brand pages are launched and populated, the next logical step is to build an ad platform that encourages engagement and incorporates the social graph. With this, brands can appeal to consumers by using interest data — the things consumers say they actually like — just as we see on Facebook. The difference is that Google can target ads based on consumer intent data, at a higher level of relevancy than is possible on Facebook. An engagement model based on social and search intent data will improve the efficiency and efficacy of social advertising, in terms of both relevancy and performance.

Read more: http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/google-transform-search-search-marketing/228835/