Category: News & Trends

Google is on a roll. Here’s a link to another new patent that Google is working to get on content discernment. I have not read the full patent disclosure yet, but it appears that Google working to identify content and assign it an Agent Rank and assign an authority rating based on the author. Well, that is it in a nutshell in very simplistic terms.

There has never been a more important time than to become an expert in your own field using your website to disseminate information about your area of business and to keep your clients and readers up-to-date with information using a blog, RSS news feed, and e-newsletters archived on your website. Doing this will establish you as an authority in your marketplace and provide value to your readers.

In the past four months, this will be the second patent disclosure from Google that I have read. The earlier disclosure had to do with identifying duplicated content across websites and identifying which website should be the one to receive top ranking as more authoritative. Now we have a disclosure to identify how authoritative a writer is on the web. These two patent appear to dovetail very nicely with each other.

You can click our blog post title and read the full patent disclosure. It I glean any additional information today, I will post it here tomorrow.

Okay this is hot and you really should take advantage of it. In certain markets, Google is now showing a map and local listings above the organic search results. That means that you should make sure that you are in Google Maps! This is a similar approach to what Yahoo has taken, but has charged big time for based on metropolitan market. I have one client who paid Yahoo $800 per month to have this type of positioning that Google appears to be giving away free.

Now here is the hot tip, it appears that Google Maps is now also showing reviews for businesses tied to the Google Maps information and the reviews are all coming from a site called Yelp.com. You can click our post title and go there directly to check it out.

It can really work for you when you have a great review about your business from a real customer and now Google is helping you to get business and credibility for free. Wow, that is a big deal — first take advantage of Google Maps and second build your credibility online by pointing satisfied customers to Yelp.com to build your online reputation.

Note: I do not recommend that you do this in a bogus way, do not try to pad your references online; that would be disreputable and Google is very smart, it may come back to haunt you. Best to play it straight up and honest!

I haven’t seen this in any of the professionals forums or even on the MSN adCenter blog, but I was looking at a potential client’s account for management services and his account is on MSN adCenter Beta. Interesting! Of note was the fact that MSN adCenter is moving to a control panel much like Yahoo’s.

Of particular interest to me was the fact that in adCenter Beta, MSN has dropped “Orders”. Now there are only campaigns, ad groups, and ad text just like the Google AdWords model. The interface was much more user friendly and is clearly a new change for MSN which is struggling to resolve some of the “issues” that professionals find with their current pay per click advertising interface.

I am looking forward myself to migrating to this new fresher and hopefully bug-free interface for Microsoft adCenter.

We are all seeing Web 2.0 on the Web and in forums, but what exactly is that and what does it mean. Web 2.0 is just another name for an interactive website. One that is not static in nature, but rather interacts with the user.

But now we see the emergence of “Web 2.0”, a fairly new term that describes an innovative type of website that is built on the participation of its users. Blogs, wikis Podcasts and social networks all fall under the Web 2.0 umbrella.

Huh? Web 2.0 means introducing Buzz Clouds, interactive blogs — wikis, podcasts, RSS news feeds, user participation on your site. Allowing your users to search your site, add content and comments, and in general interact with the information that you have. That is the jist of Web 2.0.

Don’t get tied up on the details, just know that users want more ability to interact. Websites are transitioning from a one way directional interchange of data, you to the user, to a more multi-directional exchange, you to the user, user to you, user to user. A great example is a blog. Comments are left on a post you or another reader can comment and a real exchange happens. Well a small microcosm really. Web 2.0 is on a much broader scale, but a blog, video, news feeds, are all a start to help you transition to this new direction and something fairly easy to implement now.