Planetaki Planet RFORTES

Ship Wars@ Google Waterloo: A virtual battle of intergalactic spacecraft

2012-02-10T22:56:24Z

On Tuesday, January 24, Google Waterloo opened its doors to engineers from the Kitchener-Waterloo area to participate in the first ever Ship Wars Programming Competition. The brainchild of myself and another Waterloo engineer, Garret Kelly, Ship Wars is a competition in which participants code their own intergalactic crafts in the programming language of their choice, and then battle against each other in a virtual environment. The inaugural competition proved quite popular, drawing nearly 40 participants, ready for battle.

The game itself went through a lengthy series of internal tests and refinements at the Google Waterloo office in the weeks leading up to the tournament. On the day of the event, participants quickly learned how to play and were able to code, test and enter their virtual ships into competition in under three hours. Not an easy feat!

The engineers brought their own machines (mostly laptops, but a few brought in huge desktops) to build and run their ships. After a brief overview of the rules, they were able to get started coding their ships in the language of their choice—some even switched languages mid-way through the event, changing their plan of attack. They were able to control the way the ships moved (direction and speed) and the strength of their weapons, but were only given clues as to how their ship and weapon systems would behave inside the simulation— the rest had to be deduced by playing test matches against example ships. This type of on-the-fly problem solving proved to be a unique and exciting challenge.

To test their ships in battle against other engineers’ creations, head-to-head battle stations were set up around the room. At these stations, participants could see how their ships were shaping up, watch them in action and ultimately decide what changes they could make before the final competition.

Local engineers design their virtual battleships

At the end of the evening, guests were given a tour of the Google Waterloo office while their ships “went to battle.” Thousands of simulated head-to-head battles and 15 minutes later, to the sound of much laughter and raucous cheering, the ship captains saw their results and watched replays of some of the most dramatic battles. Prizes (a Motorola Xoom Tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Tablet and a Google messenger bag) were awarded to the designers of the three ships with the most wins. For more photos, here’s a link to our album.

This wildly successful event will be expanding out to a few other Google offices in the near future. Be on the lookout, Pittsburgh and Cambridge: Ship Wars is coming to you next!

Posted by Aaron Kemp, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted from the Technical Programs and Events blog)

Celebrating our history, accomplishments and community during Black History Month

2012-02-10T22:56:24Z

If you walk down the halls of our New York office, you might learn something about the history of technology. This month, our walls showcase the contributions of Black inventors in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in celebration of Black History Month.

Black History Month, which is every February in the U.S., provides us with an opportunity to recognize the history and diversity of the communities where we operate. Yesterday, our midwestern Googlers listened to the music of Michigan’s only Black and Latino Orchestra and next week, Dr. Clarence Jones will be speaking to our Bay-area Googlers about writing Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. This is just a small sampling of the dozens of celebrations Googlers are hosting all month long.

Black History Month also gives us a chance to celebrate the diversity of our Googlers and highlight some ways we work with underrepresented groups. One of my favorite examples is the story of the Black Googlers Network (BGN). In June 2006, a group of Googlers looking to connect and foster community among Black colleagues got together to create an internal networking group. The Black Googlers Network started as a mailing list, but quickly grew into much more. Passionate about growing the next generation of Black leaders in the technology industry, BGN partnered with our university programs team to strengthen our relationships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). As a result, we’ve not only increased our recruiting presence at these schools, but are now also partnering with HBCU faculty to develop STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum, encouraging more students to pursue degrees in these areas and prepare them for careers in technology.

Members of our BGN are also shaping the way we do business. In May of 2009, two recent grads in our Ann Arbor office saw an opportunity, and what started as an idea bounced around between two twenty-somethings turned into an official Google program. The idea was to help minority-owned small businesses grow their online presence and, just a few months later, the idea became a reality when Accelerate with Google officially launched. The program has since grown into a team of several dozen Googlers, all working to get small, minority-owned businesses online and helping those business owners connect with one another.

Our passionate Googlers, like those behind BGN and Accelerate, allow us to better connect with the Black community and help to create an inclusive and diverse workplace. As we throw dozens of celebrations around the country in our Atlanta, Chicago, Ann Arbor, New York, Los Angeles and Mountain View offices to mark Black History Month, we invite you to join us by following our Google for Students and Life at Google pages on Google+, where we’ll be hosting photos, recaps and hangouts throughout the month.

Posted by Yolanda Mangolini, Director of Global Diversity Talent & Inclusion

Google Places Rescinds PO Box Rule Change

2012-02-10T16:03:12Z

We’re up, we’re down. We’re not sure where we are.

Reader & TC Jim Jaggers alerted me to the fact that Google has changed the Google Places PO Box guidelines once again. In this new reading PO Boxes are definitely out. Suite numbers and box numbers are in. The new prohibition against moving the pin (a wide spread spam tactic to get a location in the city center without changing the address) is still in affect.

02/08/2012 Guideline	02/10/2012 Guideline
Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. If you operate from a location but receive mail at a P.O. Box there, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your P.O. Box information in Address Line 2.	Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. If you operate from a location but receive mail at a mail box there, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mail box or suite number in Address Line 2.

Clearly this means that PO Boxes of any ilk are still verboten even when they are legitimate. This means that those that in rural areas that don’t get mail deliver will still need to request approval via the Troubleshooters on the Help Pages.

Certainly it is significant that Google is publicly calling out the tactic of the moving the pins and putting folks on alert that have abused the Pin placement. Usually it takes some time for an algo update to the filters to see the new guideline put into action. They can’t occur soon enough in this situation.

Perhaps tomorrow, in addition to filtering out the pin location changing activity, Google will also (and more importantly) deemphasize the value of the centroid!

Why you need multiple social media accounts?

2012-02-10T19:00:45Z

Imagine you'll start a Chinese social media campaign, with more than 10 accounts to manage, will you be crazy? Take Weibo as an example, the big players are Sina, Tencent, 163 and Sohu, not to mention lots of small ones....

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Jornada Inversión en empresas de base tecnológica en Marbella

2012-02-10T18:37:55Z

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Jornada Inversión en empresas de base tecnológica en Marbella

El movimiento se demuestra andando, por eso es muy importante que cada vez haya más eventos en los que se facilite a los emprendedores dar a conocer su proyecto y sobre todo si pueden hacerlo ante inversores con capacidad para apoyar sus planes de negocio. Christopher Pommerening y Rodolfo Carpintier serán dos de los inversores [...]

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Offerum compra Buytheface

2012-02-10T10:21:23Z

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Offerum compra Buytheface

Con la compra de Letsbonus por parte de Livingsocial comentamos que la consolidación en el sector continuaría y aquí tenemos una nueva noticia en esta línea, la compra de Buytheface por parte de Offerum. He podido hablar con Vicente Arias, fundador junto con Jesús Monleón de Offerum y me ha confirmado que la razón principal [...]

An update on the Google bar

2012-02-10T06:22:57Z

Two months ago, we announced our plans to roll out a new design for the Google bar. Our goal was to create a beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google. Based on your feedback, we realized there were some elements of the new bar that we could improve, and with that in mind, we’re introducing an updated version that we believe will provide a better experience.

The new design retains many of the feature changes we made in November that proved popular, including a unified search box and Google+ sharing and notifications across Google. The biggest change is that we’ve replaced the drop-down Google menu with a consistent and expanded set of links running across the top of the page.

We'll be rolling out this new version of the Google bar over the next few weeks. In the meantime, we invite you to read about the new design in our Help Center, and send us your feedback.

Posted by Eddie Kessler, Technical Lead

Congratulations to Amit Singhal on his election to NAE

2012-02-09T21:51:13Z

This morning, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced the election of 66 new members, including our very own Amit Singhal, Google Fellow and lead on Google Search. Amit joins a list of nine of us Googlers who have previously been recognized by the NAE: Sergey Brin, Vint Cerf, Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Dick Sites, Ken Thompson and myself.

Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. The Academy recognized Amit for his contributions to information retrieval and search, where Amit has creatively applied and extended the science of information retrieval to new heights that were almost unthinkable when the field was founded. In so doing, he has had a tremendous and beneficial impact on the world with sustained excellence of Google’s search.

Amit was similarly recognized by the Association of Computing Machinery two months ago. I encourage you to read more about his important contributions in our blog post from December. Congratulations to Amit!

Posted by Alfred Spector, VP, Google Research

To Google or… to Yandex?

2012-02-09T17:39:57Z

As promised, here’s my overview of the features that Yandex, the Russian search giant, offers its users, compared of Google. Yandex’s unique advantage is that it was created specifically for searching in Russian, considering Russian mo......

Preparing your site for a traffic spike

2012-02-09T22:42:34Z

Webmaster level: Intermediate

It’s a moment any site owner both looks forward to, and dreads: a huge surge in traffic to your site (yay!) can often cause your site to crash (boo!). Maybe you’ll create a piece of viral content, or get Slashdotted, or maybe Larry Page will get a tattoo and your site on tech tattoos will be suddenly in vogue.

Many people go online immediately after a noteworthy event—a political debate, the death of a celebrity, or a natural disaster—to get news and information about that event. This can cause a rapid increase in traffic to websites that provide relevant information, and may even cause sites to crash at the moment they’re becoming most popular. While it’s not always possible to anticipate such events, you can prepare your site in a variety of ways so that you’ll be ready to handle a sudden surge in traffic if one should occur:

Prepare a lightweight version of your site.
Consider maintaining a lightweight version of your website; you can then switch all of your traffic over to this lightweight version if you start to experience a spike in traffic. One good way to do this is to have a mobile version of your site, and to make the mobile site available to desktop/PC users during periods of high traffic. Another low-effort option is to just maintain a lightweight version of your homepage, since the homepage is often the most-requested page of a site as visitors start there and then navigate out to the specific area of the site that they’re interested in. If a particular article or picture on your site has gone viral, you could similarly create a lightweight version of just that page.
A couple tips for creating lightweight pages:

Exclude decorative elements like images or Flash wherever possible; use text instead of images in the site navigation and chrome, and put most of the content in HTML.
Use static HTML pages rather than dynamic ones; the latter place more load on your servers. You can also cache the static output of dynamic pages to reduce server load.

Take advantage of stable third-party services.
Another alternative is to host a copy of your site on a third-party service that you know will be able to withstand a heavy stream of traffic. For example, you could create a copy of your site—or a pared-down version with a focus on information relevant to the spike—on a platform like Google Sites or Blogger; use services like Google Docs to host documents or forms; or use a content delivery network (CDN).
Use lightweight file formats.
If you offer downloadable information, try to make the downloaded files as small as possible by using lightweight file formats. For example, offering the same data as a plain text file rather than a PDF can allow users to download the exact same content at a fraction of the filesize (thereby lightening the load on your servers). Also keep in mind that, if it’s not possible to use plain text files, PDFs generated from textual content are more lightweight than PDFs with images in them. Text-based PDFs are also easier for Google to understand and index fully.
Make tabular data available in CSV and XML formats.
If you offer numerical or tabular data (data displayed in tables), we recommend also providing it in CSV and/or XML format. These filetypes are relatively lightweight and make it easy for external developers to use your data in external applications or services in cases where you want the data to reach as many people as possible, such as in the wake of a natural disaster.

We’d love to hear your tips and tricks for weathering traffic spikes—come join us in our Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst

7 Types of Content to Get Traffic and Links

2012-02-09T19:49:25Z

I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently working with clients on their content strategies for 2012. Its something I’ve been keen to evangelise and get them to invest resource into, some clients have been harder than others to convince! I can see why its sometimes a hard thing to buy into, but I firmly believe that having a solid content strategy in place is essential for the majority of sites we work with. Tom wrote this post on content marketing yesterday which I’d urge you to go and read.

Why companies struggle with content marketing

Two of the common problems that many companies have with content production are -

Resource to create content – many do not have time or specialist writers in-house
They lack ideas of what content they can create or their industry is “boring”

There are more, but these are probably the consistent ones that I hear.

I am hoping that the rest of this post helps solve these problems. I’ve given the following examples for a few reasons -

Most of them can be used across most industries – boring or not
They don’t all require hours and hours of resource to get done
They will help you get traffic or links or both

Getting Inspiration

Before diving into examples, I wanted to give some pointers and tools for how to get inspiration for your clients content. It can be difficult at times, particularly if you have a client in an industry that doesn’t seem particularly interesting at first glance.

Brainstorming internally and with the client

First step should be a bit of a no brainer. But remember some key points to running a good brainstorm session and don’t overlook the opportunity to brainstorm with your client if that is an option. This can have lots of advantages, one of which being that the client can veto or approve edgy ideas straight away. So the outcome will be a list of ideas which you know you can get sign off for which makes the time you send researching more focused.

Non-competitor analysis

You all know to look at what competitors are doing, again thats a no brainer. But make sure you look outside your vertical too and see what cool stuff other people are doing, sometimes you’ll come across an idea that can be easily applied to your own niche or a concept that can be applied to your own content. For example, with the right data, could you become the Ok Cupid of your industry?

Spezify

I’ve mentioned this before but its worth mentioning again. I love Spezify. If you are ever in a jam and have a bit of brain freeze, plug a keyword or two into it and leave it for a few minutes. It will go off and aggregate loads of tweets, images and all sorts of other results to give you an idea of what is being talked about right now.

For some extra fun, plug a friend or colleagues name into it and see what it finds

So what here we go with seven types of content you can produce for traffic and link building.

Video Content

This is something which is getting bigger and bigger within Google SERPs at the moment and I think that websites that get on board with this now can dominate in the future. For me, there are two ways you can leverage video content to help your website.

As a link building tool – I’ve written before about getting links using your YouTube videos which is something I’d highly recommend. The other way you can leverage videos is to create your own and use them as link bait – but this is hard. If you have the resources, then go for it and create your own videos. Just take a look at Zappos who have over 50,000 product videos!

This leads me onto the second way you can leverage video content.

To increase click-throughs from SERPs - Take a look at this result from Zappos:

This puts them a step ahead (see what I did there) of their competitors. If they can get to a point where their product pages are ranking well and have these snippets showing, then they will most likely see an increase in click through rate from search results because they stand out so much.

We’ve been doing some testing lately on a client site where we are trying to get a video showing in SERPs which when clicked, go straight to the client site rather than somewhere like Vimeo or YouTube. So far its been working well and I’d recommend using something like Wistia to help you with this.

Infographics

I’ll say it, I don’t really like them that much. The reason being that I see so many terrible ones that can’t even be classed as infographics. I also think there are sometimes easier and more efficient ways to get links. That being said, they can (and do) get links. If you have the time and resource to do them well, then infographics can be a good way of getting links.

I’ve stolen a few principles from Mark which I’m going to put here. Really, infographics should do the following if they are to be successful -

Answer a question or solve someones problem
Be based on real data that can be backed up
Make data or facts easier to digest than written content
Show the user something they didn’t already know

If you do have a good infographic to promote, there are loads of sites out there which are dedicated to just infographics, I published a list here of the ones which I know of.

I know what some of you are thinking, infographics are mega expensive to produce. Yes they can be, but they do not have to be. Take a look at this one which Mark did on his personal site which attracted 115 linking root domains. All he used was a camera and some nice cake mix!

Interactive Content

This excites me a lot more than static infographics. For me, the companies who find a way of bridging the gap between their product and interactive content will win in the long term. Lets take a look at an example.

I love this World Cup planner by Marca. Imagine if you were a retailer of tickets for the World Cup and you produced this. Imagine you could click through and purchase tickets for the game of your choice, but rather than the standard way of finding them, you use this interactive selector?

This is a perfect use of interactive content because it attracts people to your website for being genuinely useful, but it doesn’t end there, you can convert these people into buyers with the right integration and calls to action.

The next step of link building and content marketing is the integration of this interactive content onto product and category pages – solving the age old problem of getting links to ecommerce pages. Do this and you’ll win the internet – its hard though!

Q&A Content

If you are tight on budget, this can be a great one to use. Chances are that whatever product or service you sell, you get common questions about it. If you have email support staff, they probably have standard copy and paste answers that go into emails – is that content on your website and indexable? If not, get it on there.

The beauty of this type of content is that it has the ability to attract traffic as well as links, in particular in technical fields. Also, it is obvious that Google are moving towards becoming a better place to get direct answers to questions, searches such as this prove it -

The trend for users searching using a question rather than a keyword is growing too, look at the insight data for “how can” and “does the” -

If you can position yourself as a site where you provide direct answers, you will not only get good long tail traffic, but you will also move towards becoming an authority in your field.

Make sure you take a look at the Wordtracker Question Tool which can give you some ideas of what people ask related to your keywords. Also look at your keyword data in Google Analytics and filter for keywords which include things like “how” “what” and “can” etc.

Bonus for ecommerce sites – if you can tie Q&A content into your product pages, you have a massively scalable way of getting good quality, relevant content onto your product pages. Here is an example of how Jessops are doing this -

I don’t believe this content is currently crawlable, but if it were, long tail traffic would most likely increase.

User Generated Content

You’ve all read about customer reviews as user generated content, but what about other forms of content such as images or videos? Amazon have been doing this for a long time now but smaller retailers are doing this too, even this retailer that sells garden sheds -

You may need to add an incentive to get customers to go to the effort of this, but even if its just a 10% off voucher, some will do it and you have another sale.

Pro tip – make sure you are asking these customers if they have a blog, Facebook or Twitter accounts. If they do, send them appropriate calls to action to get them to share the images once they are live on your site.

Guest Blogging

I bet most of us have spent time guest blogging to get links for clients, but how many of you have invited guest bloggers onto your blog to write for you? It has two main advantages -

Allows you to get good content if your own resource or time is short
The writers will naturally share it and link to their article

You will need to dedicate some time to quality control, but this will not be anywhere near as much as you writing the content yourself.

Taking things a step further, you can also use a few principles of gamification to motivate your guest bloggers. For example you can reward bloggers who get the most traffic, most links or social shares with a random prize. The key is to make this reward publicly visible and be super transparent about how bloggers can win these prizes.

Competitions

Don’t dismiss this one. If you can get creative enough, this can not only be a content win but also a link building one.

If you can find a way of coming up with a competition which involves people producing content in order to win, you are onto a winner. Here is an example of this on PostGrad which involved getting entrants to visualise a piece of data. The best visualisation won the competition and was featured on the blog. This not only got links but provided great content for their site -

You can be pretty flexible on the type of content you ask for -

Written content such as a blog post
Images – e.g. baiting photographers for their best photos
Videos – e.g. record a video of yourself singing a song

Some thought it needed to make sure the barrier to entry is low but the quality of the output is high, but this is definitely possible across most industries.

To wrap up, I know that producing great content is not easy. But you need to at least make a start on the path to getting it right, online brands who are not investing in content are going to get left behind.

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Freepik metabuscador de fotos y vectores gratuito

2012-02-10T01:58:56Z

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Freepik metabuscador de fotos y vectores gratuito

Hay proyectos que cuando empiezas a conocer un poco llaman poderosamente la atención y un ejemplo es Freepik un metabuscador de recursos gratuitos para diseñadores, bloggers, y todo aquel que necesite buscar contenido de calidad gratuito. Una iniciativa de Alejandro Sánchez que en tan solo un año de funcionamiento ha logrado las impresionantes cifras de [...]

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Freepik metabuscador de fotos y vectores gratuito

2012-02-10T01:58:55Z

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Freepik metabuscador de fotos y vectores gratuito

Hay proyectos que cuando empiezas a conocer un poco llaman poderosamente la atención y un ejemplo es Freepik un metabuscador de recursos gratuitos para diseñadores, bloggers, y todo aquel que necesite buscar contenido de calidad gratuito. Una iniciativa de Alejandro Sánchez que en tan solo un año de funcionamiento ha logrado las impresionantes cifras de [...]

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Mejor no entres en Ofertronic porque acabarás comprando

2012-02-10T01:58:55Z

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Mejor no entres en Ofertronic porque acabarás comprando

El que avisa no es traidor, si te gustan los gadgets acabarás comprando en Ofertronic la nueva web dedicada al lanzamiento constante de ofertas, promociones y novedades de productos de las principales marcas en telefonía móvil, electrónica personal y gadgets. Tengo la suerte de participar en este gran proyecto liderado por Marcelo Ruz y en [...]

Read my lips…No more klunen

2012-02-09T17:39:57Z

8 p.m. last night…koek and zopie concession stands preprogrammed on the ‘phoney’, Red Cross app fully tested and operational, extra battery pack..check, thermal gear up to par..doublechecked, eagerness..triplechecked, hey I am r......

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Mejor no entres en Ofertronic porque acabarás comprando

2012-02-10T18:37:55Z

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Mejor no entres en Ofertronic porque acabarás comprando

El que avisa no es traidor, si te gustan los gadgets acabarás comprando en Ofertronic la nueva web dedicada al lanzamiento constante de ofertas, promociones y novedades de productos de las principales marcas en telefonía móvil, electrónica personal y gadgets. Tengo la suerte de participar en este gran proyecto liderado por Marcelo Ruz y en [...]

Google y las busquedas sociales

2012-02-09T10:25:21Z

Google y las busquedas sociales El año pasado Google tenía un acuerdo con Twitter para mostrar resultados en tiempo real en su buscador. En enero de este año Google anunció la integración de Google Plus en las SERPs (en google.com … Continuar leyendo →

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Trocobank y mis dudas sobre el trueque en internet

2012-02-10T01:58:56Z

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Trocobank y mis dudas sobre el trueque en internet

Como ya sabéis soy un convencido de los modelos de negocio peer to peer y la lógica me llevaría a pensar que el siguiente paso es el uso del trueque o de monedas virtuales que nos sirvan para no tener que seguir usando los euros o los dólares en las transacciones que realizamos entre usuarios [...]

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Trocobank y mis dudas sobre el trueque en internet

2012-02-10T01:58:55Z

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: Trocobank y mis dudas sobre el trueque en internet

Como ya sabéis soy un convencido de los modelos de negocio peer to peer y la lógica me llevaría a pensar que el siguiente paso es el uso del trueque o de monedas virtuales que nos sirvan para no tener que seguir usando los euros o los dólares en las transacciones que realizamos entre usuarios [...]

Going gothic with bestselling author Anne Rice

2012-02-08T20:54:10Z

Bestselling Southern American author Anne Rice is coming to Google headquarters to discuss her latest book, The Wolf Gift, on Friday, February 24 at 10am PT. One of the most popular authors of contemporary fiction, Rice has bewitched readers with her vampire chronicles, tales of the Mayfair Witches and other metaphysical gothic fiction for more than thirty years. Submit your question online between now and Feb 23 at midnight PT, and it could be asked during the Interview with the Vampire—we mean, the interview with Anne Rice. To watch the live broadcast, tune in to the Authors@Google YouTube channel on February 24 at 10am PT. If you miss it, the recording will be posted in its entirety after the interview is over. For more information on Anne Rice and her new book, read the full post on the Google Books blog.

The Time For Content Marketing Is Now

2012-02-08T18:50:46Z

It puzzles me that the SEO industry and the content marketing industries rarely talk to each other. While there is some modest overlap, by and large, the two worlds keep to themselves on blogs, twitter, and even with having separate conferences. This strikes me as a missed opportunity for both industries. I believe there’s a lot we can learn from each other and in this post and more over the coming weeks, I’d like to bridge the gap between the two industries and foster communication and discussion between SEOs and content marketers.

Why SEOs Should Care About Content Marketing

We demand budgets and resources from our clients in order to produce content. We are hungry for and passionate about content. And not just content that will rank for keywords, but content that will be remarkable- content that will earn links and content that will convert users into customers. We should care about content marketing. We should understand how it works, how brands produce content, and what innovation looks like. There is rumbling within the SEO industry towards more cross-disciplinary inbound marketing and as we make this shift and become involved in these projects, it will become crucial to understand how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

To be crystal clear, content marketing is not article marketing or spun press releases. We’re talking about editorial remarkable content that a brand can be proud of.

Content Marketing is Hot Right Now

Content marketing is undergoing massive growth right now and we’re seeing a revolution take place across all aspects of online marketing. One of the most widely shared and high profile examples is Coke’s recent 2020 content strategy. These videos are long, but essential watching if you want to understand how brands are going to be spending their marketing budgets in the coming years:

Props to Joe Pulizzi for covering this originally.

Brands Are Becoming Publishers

As hinted at in the above videos, brands are starting to wake up to the fact that generating unique and compelling content is the key to winning online. As some are lamenting the death of the publishing industry, publishing for brands is undergoing a revolution. Brands like Redbull are leading the charge:

Red Bull, the popular energy drink, supports its content strategy with just that foundation, though, owning its very own Red Bull Media House. [...] RedBull.com covers all of its digital bases, with an offering of web TV, web radio, online games, newsfeeds and digital databases. [...] And to date, nearly 300 million YouTube views have been generated from Red Bull content, making Red Bull Media House one of the top five sports content producers on YouTube globally – source

Props to Erica at Contently for writing the post about Red Bull’s content strategy

But Smart Publishers Are Doing Just Fine, Thanks

Let’s not count the old school publishers as down and out just yet though. Those that get the web and embrace the new world of content consumption and marketing are thriving:

The Atlantic, the intellectual’s monthly that always seemed more comfortable as an academic exercise than a business, is on track to turn a tidy profit of $1.8 million this year. That would be the first time in at least a decade that it had not lost money – source

You should read the whole NYT piece on the profile of The Atlantic, it’s a fascinating #longread.

The Observer is profitable by a thin margin for the first time in its 24-year history. This is a big, big deal. – source

This is a quote from Elizabeth Spiers, Editor in Chief for the Observer, and is part of a fascinating look at the Observer one year in.

Everyone Is Producing Original Content

There’s a real macro trend here for companies to start producing original content. UGC-driven communities are doing it:

The popular social blogging site Tumblr is hiring writers and editors to cover the world of Tumblr. [...] “Basically, if Tumblr were a city of 42 million,” Ms. Bennett said, referring to the number of Tumblr blogs that exist, “I’m trying to figure out how we cover the ideas, themes and people who live in it.” – source

Content juggernauts like Netflix are doing it:

Up until now, Netflix has not had content in this first window. Instead, they’ve focused on the second or third or even fourth window. That is, they’ve shown content after it’s in theaters or on television for its initial run. And sometimes they don’t get content until after it’s been in theaters and then on television for quite some time. This catalog of content has been the service’s bread and butter.But with House of Cards, the game changes. For the first time, they’re going to get people signing up to Netflix to get first access to content. And if it’s as good as the talent behind it suggests, they might get a lot of people signing up for that very reason – source

A Focus On Engagement Is One Emergent Trend

Smart marketers have known this for a while: there’s real value in not only sucking users in with content, but also keeping them engaged once they hit the site.

in a front-page story in December, Donna St. George reported that black students in the D.C. area were suspended and expelled two to five times as often as whites. That story attracted 3,736 comments, more than 2,000 of those by 9 o’clock in the morning – source

Wow. By the way you should check out the full article where among other fascinating insights I learned that the Washington Post has 6 full time staff dedicated to comments.

From a technology perspective, I’m fascinated by features like Disqus Ranks that allows anyone to better reward and engage with commenters on their site.

Bold Content Plays Is Another Emergent Trend

Fortune favors the bold. There have been some bold redesigns and rethinking of the traditional blog format in recent times. I love the FastCo redesign:

Disruptive Business Models Are Another

As the old-school traditional ad model starts to die out, we’ll see more innovative and disruptive revenue models for content. Retargeting is just the start of this revolution and we’ll see all kinds of crazy approaches. In particular I was struck by how Buzzfeed monetizes their site:

Its business model, in part, capitalizes on the mix of high and low content; instead of banner ads, BuzzFeed works with companies like Pillsbury to create content ideal for sharing, including “10 Things You Never Knew You Could Do With a Crescent Roll.” – source

What Can We Learn From All This?

I’m a fan of actionable insights and I think there are a few key takeaways that I can see:

1) Being Remarkable Produces Outsized Rewards

In the connected world in which we live, the difference between average content and bad content is hardly noticeable. In fact, the difference between good content and bad content is not that big. Truly, the only thing that really gets rewarded is remarkable content. If you’re investing in content production, always invest in the most amazing, ballsy, amazing content that you can get your hands on because if you build it, they won’t come. This quote sums things up for me:

We’ve tried to work longer on stories for greater impact, and publish fewer quick-takes that we know you can consume elsewhere. We’re actually publishing, on average, roughly one-third fewer posts on Salon than we were a year ago (from 848 to 572 in December; 943 to 602 in January). So: 33 percent fewer posts; 40 percent greater traffic – source

This is a quote from a fascinating article about the growth of Salon.com – check the whole thing out

2) Hire a Chief Content Officer

I spoke about the need for a Chief Content Officer in my SearchLove presentation in NYC and this is a trend that businesses of all size need to follow. The key point here is that this role needs to be senior enough to oversee all kinds of content production. David Edelman agrees with me:

Our research shows that in companies where the marketing function takes on the role of publisher in chief—rationalizing the creation and flow of product related content— consumers develop a clearer sense of the brand and are better able to articulate the attributes of specific products. These marketers also become more agile with their content, readily adapting it to sales training videos and other new uses that ultimately enhance consumers’ decision journey – source

This is a quote from the full version of this article (which you’ll need to register to be able to read) and the whole thing is well worth a read.

3) Invest in Page Types

As Sonia points out at Copyblogger, every page is now a landing page and it’s important for both social and SEO to invest in crafting excellent page types. I always point to Oyster.com as the gold standard here with their large imagery and massively detailed content, but really more sites are starting to get this. If you’re not investing in making your content pages be excellent pages with thick content, then you’re going to get left behind by those that are investing in their page types:

4) SEOs Are Perfectly Placed To Engage In Content Marketing

Smart SEOs are already doing content marketing as part of their online marketing strategies and have been for some time. Our skillset matches extremely well with what it takes to win at content marketing. In particular, we understand the whole process. In summary, producing content looks like this for us here at Distilled:

Researching & identifying influencers and communities
Keyword research & analysis
Competitive content research
Creative content generation
Outreach and promotion
Analytics, measurement and tracking

I’ll end this post by highlighting an in-depth analysis of what content promotion looks like and how a simple guest post can be more powerful than many other mainstream content channels:

In previous times, before the Internet, this was called the Oprah Effect. And don’t get me wrong, I’d still leap at the opportunity to share my message on cable with arguably the most persuasive person who ever walked the planet. (Producers—you can reach me via my website!)But as more of our attention (and our book buying) shifts online, its only natural that the mantle Oprah held for a quarter of a century in introducing readers to new books, shifts to a digital native.And in my opinion, the digital native who has taken up that mantle in the book world, is Tim Ferriss – source

Go read the whole piece, it’s fascinating and detailed.

We do an awful lot of guest posting as SEOs, and we’re already valuing the benefits of this above and beyond a simple link. Now is the time to understand content marketing.

Image Credit: Movable Type www

Tom Critchlow Tom Critchlow is VP Operations for the NYC office, living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan. Fiercely curious about most things and passionate about everything.

Follow @tomcritchlow

Tom Critchlow

Many Google Places Searches Are Showing an Increased Radius For Search Results

2012-02-08T22:22:46Z

It appears that Google has again increased the search radius for a large number of “search phrase + city” searches

Since the spring of last year, Google has been reducing the radius for displaying results on many local searches. Effectively this meant that businesses outside the smaller radius would no longer show a pinned result. I had investigated this problem in searches as varied as “Jewerly Buffalo NY”, “Personal Injury Attorney Anchorage”, “Bankruptcy Attorney Charlotte”, “New Orleans Divorce” and “DC Accident Attorney” amongst others. In each of these cases businesses that had once shown up in the Google Places Search results were no longer found. Frequently they had dropped as many as 40 or 50 places on their head terms only.

Uniformly it appeared that Google had increased the “location sensitivity” of the search limiting which businesses would be seen. This affect has been noted in a number of industries and Google had spoken about their testing of this on NPR.

Brian Combs of Ionadas.com alerted me that the radius had once again increased to show search results from a much broader map area. In the five cases that I had looked at, the businesses that had been dropped with the decreased radius, once again showed up on the map and in the search.

Here is an screen shot of the map that showed for the search area that presented during last year and the search area presented as of yesterday on the search “Jewerly Buffalo NY“. Note the dramatic increase in distance from the centroid and the number of included pins in the newest results. Under the previous reduced radius only businesses in very close proximity to the centroid were shown. (click to view larger):

Linda Buquet documented the reduced search area in her October post Google Places Algorithm Change – New Proximity Lockout Algo Can Cause Major Ranking Drop. The reduced radius had also been noted by Andrew Shotland in June of 2011. The reduced radius appeared to rollout in different markets at different times but its return has occurred on all of the searches I examined simultaneously.

What is going on?

In the examples that I looked at (“Jewelers Buffalo NY”, “Personal Injury Attorneys Anchorage” or “Bankruptcy Lawyers Charlotte”) were all head term, primary keyword/category searches. It effectively left some businesses without a front page presence for their primary high traffic terms that were previously ranking well.

At the time Linda Buquet suggested that Google had created a new algo. I have also heard the reduced radius referred to as a filter. However it is much more likely that Google has tweaked their existing “Location Sensitivity” routines either manually or automatically to provide new results.

“Location sensitivity” is a concept from Google’s Patent: Methods and Systems for Improving A Search Ranking using Location Awareness”. First filed in 2006 and approved in 2009, Bill Slawsky covered the details of this patent in December of 2006 .

According to the patent, Location Sensitivity is a score that may be a “function of the topic, the search query or query terms, the user or user profile, the location associated with the query or a cluster of the search results or any umber of other factors”.

The patent notes: “For example, location component may determine that users are generally more location sensitive for the topic “pizza” than for the topic “automobiles/cars,” so that users may generally be interested in documents on the topic of “automobiles/cars” that are far(ther) away from their location, whereas users may generally only be interested in documents on the topic of “pizza” that are near(er) to their location.”

Thus for any given combination of product-service + geo search the radius for the returned results can either be smaller or larger. For a highly location sensitive search that has a high number of results in a small area the radius will be smaller. For a low location sensitive search with the few results spread far and wide, the radius will be larger.

This can vary by things as diverse at the density of the geography, the density of the businesses within the geography or the clustering of those businesses in a small area. It can vary by the geo search term used defining a different sensitivity (ie radius) for zip code than city or neighborhood for example. As Bill pointed out in a recent email, it could even be affected by users retrieving more driving directions.

In the case of mobile, Google has publicly acknowledged testing and tweaking the distance of the radius on these types of search, making it significantly smaller and it is possible that they were testing the same thing on the desktop. If you haven’t listened to this interview, you should.

It could be that Google is increasing the radius as much as they are decreasing it due to the factors above. I and others in the search business are more likely to get called when a business ranking drops thus the samples set I look at was biased. The fact that it has only been noted within the last 8-10 months and by so many others, it seems likely that the radius was in fact getting smaller on some subset of searches and has once again gotten larger. Regardless if it happens to your listing on a critical search phrase it sucks. And just like the radius has again increased, it can decrease.

How can you tell if your client is suffering from the effect of increased location sensitivity and a reduced radius go forward?

First and foremost it is necessary to distinguish this situation from a penalty. Unlike a penalty, the listing will still rank for longer tail, less competitive categories or perhaps suburban or neighborhood terms. If the listing was previously showing for a primary category/city search and is now only still showing on lower volume terms then you need to consider the likelihood that the location sensitivity of your query has been increased and the search radius has been reduced.

There is a technique in Google Maps that allows a map to show a primary keyword search result plus a second search for the business on the same map. Perform the primary search, switch and create a business search. Then select the previous search from the drop down below the Map/Satelite icon so that both sets of pins are one the map. It may then be necessary to zoom out to see both search results simultaneously.

It will be quickly apparent with this technique that you are outside the radius of the main search results.

Why the results do not always serve the searcher

Google’s focus over the past 10 months on such a narrow cluster of listings is often not in the best interest of the searcher. While it might serve the mobile searcher it is much more problematic for the desktop searcher. For example in my Buffalo Jewelry example, Buffalo attracts shoppers from a wide geographic area stretching about 100 miles in any direction. My family lives 75 miles south of the city and when we say that we are going shopping in Buffalo, we usually mean to the eastern suburbs, outside the search radius. We don’t even know the names of the suburbs in that area to be able to do a more granular search. Going downtown as suggested by the search is not common nor is the selection of jewelry stores as great.

Google’s ranking algo has always had an element of distance from the center of the search area as an element in ranking. While location sensitivity could and does occur around pockets of businesses NOT in the centroid it is uncommon due to historical development patterns. This reduction of radius tends to amplify this affect, creating ever more pressure for scammers to put listings near the centroid. This may have the affect of reinforcing and perhaps even causing the tendency to reduce the search radius as more (fake) businesses are closer to the center . The technique may work in a dense urban area like NYC but in car dependent cities like Buffalo it doesn’t offer up a wide enough range of choices in the search results.

How do you cope if it happens to you?

Like taxes and the weather, there is a certain inevitability to Google. It can be frustrating and tempting to lament your loss. Sometimes though it is easier to find alternative strategies for continued success. Here are some ideas if it happens to your listing in the future:

*Be sure that your listing is not being penalized or being affected by one of the many other Google Places quirks.

See above

*Attempt to knock spammers out of Google Places so that there are fewer businesses inside the smaller radius.

Gav Heppinstall did just that and wrote it up in his post: Google Places – Cracking the Proximity Lockout Algo. We don’t know the minimum number of businesses that Google needs to create decrease or increase sensitivity. But Gav demonstrated that in at least one case, it was only necessary to knock one spammer out of the game for Google to increase the radius.

*Be sure the your website is optimized and ranks well for the phrases that you lost in local.

With the new reduced footprint of the Local results, there is once again good opportunity for doing well in organic search phrases. If you can’t succeed in the particular local search due to vagaries of location sensitivity, you can still do well organically.

*Explore alternative categories for Google Places that are valuable and show a map that includes your location.

In the case of Barbara Oliver we switched our focus to engagement rings and diamond jewelry. While the traffic was significantly less the quality, profit per sale and conversions were much higher. It behooves you to think about this issue today and be ready to work different categories if this occurs.

*Consider opening up a shop with the main search area.

If the terms are valuable enough and if there is enough business then it might warrant your expansion. I would never be driven by Google’s fickle nature but it does behoove you to explore the opportunity for expansion.

*Always be developing alternative marketing strategies

Being dependent solely on Google’s Places search result is a bad idea from the gitgo. Having your success or failure predicated on the whims of the search giant is a roller coaster at best and plan for disaster at worst. It is imperative that you have an refine techniques that will find you customers even when Google’s search result go south.

I would love to hear if you suffered from a reduced radius, how you coped and whether your listing has returned to the search results with the recent changes. Let me know.

Why Yandex loses market share

2012-02-08T16:46:12Z

Yandex, the leading Russian search engine, has been losing market share for some time now. According to Liveinternet.ru, over the last year Yandex’s market share in Russia dropped 4.8%, while Google went 4% up. Although still the absolut......

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: La triste realidad de la pyme española

2012-02-09T00:56:40Z

Javier Martín ha escrito un nuevo post en el blog: La triste realidad de la pyme española

Siguiendo con el tema de las pymes a nivel local no quería dejar de reflexionar sobre la situación en la que se encuentran debido a entorno tan poco propicio que tenemos en España para emprender. Con lo difícil que es todo por aquí me parece totalmente lógico que muchos nuevos emprendedores se marchen a USA [...]

Google Places Updates Quality Guidelines on the Use of PO Boxes

2012-02-08T22:22:46Z

Google has once again updated (props to Nyagoslav for first highlighting the change) their Google Places Quality Guideline in regards to the use of PO Boxes in the address field. Once proscribed, they are not again allowed in the second address field only.

Google first added the prohibition on the use of PO Boxes in 2009 after widespread abuses of the feature to create additional locations. In late 2010, after the November 2010 guideline update, they actively began removing rejecting listings that had PO Box in their address. Subsequently they added a nanny bot filter in the Places Dashboard that prevented the use of the words PO Box when creating a new Places listing that gave a Term Not Allowed error if the term were used.

Here is the evolution of the guideline from 2009 till today with the changes highlighted:

11/2009 Guideline	11/17/2010 Guideline	02/08/2012 Guideline
Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist. PO Boxes do not count as physical locations.	Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. Listings submitted with P.O. Box addresses will be removed.	Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. If you operate from a location but receive mail at a P.O. Box there, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your P.O. Box information in Address Line 2.

The new guideline is an accurate reflection of the real world use of PO Boxes. In many rural environments in the US for example there is no rural mail deliver and all mail is delivered by PO Boxes. The change will allow these businesses to more easily get their listings approved without the need for a work around or intervention by a Google staffer via the new Troubleshooters.

This rule clarification was the effective, although unstated guideline that was in affect until 11/17/2010. However creative spammers developed a work around exploit that allowed for the creation of fake listings within the city centers. I described this simple exploit in the post Illusory Laptop Repair – A Most Elegant Google Places Hack.

Certainly the change will be welcomed by legitimate businesses that do not receive mail at their address. It will also relieve the Troubleshooter staff in Mt View of a tedious work freeing them up to solve less tractable problems. Hopefully Google has put in place adequate safeguards to prevent the widespread abuse that previously existed.