He has a small chip on his shoulder, about some friends of his.

After all, he invented the “friends”. (love that line)

Mark gets to thinking about Facebook and whether Google Plus will do to him what he “did” to MySpace…

Genius.

Follow these instructions.

Go to the Google Chrome Shortcut on your desktop or toolbar and right-click on it. Choose Properties. Look for the Target field.

Add this line:

- -pinned-tab-count=x

to the end of this string in Target. C:\Users\name\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe so it looks exactly like this:

C:\Users\name\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe – -pinned-tab-count=x

Now all you have to do is change the X to represent the number of tabs that you want to make permanent on the chrome browser and it will look like this every time you open your browser:

Simple as that!

Thanks to Addictive Tips for that info. Was exactly what I was looking for!

Here’s what I’m talking about.  The new app for Google Goggles.  Take a photo and get the details.

Whats your thoughts on this technology and its future?

Property prices and house values are one such indicator, and when combined with other metrics, such as unemployment – used to make important decisions. However, one of the primary problems, and challenges facing economists, is the speed at which data is received. Often, the data is out of date by the time it gets into the hands of the people that matter.

Web Development in Property

Thankfully, the web’s is advancing at a speed of knots, bring information delivery ever closer to real time, and products such as Twitter and Facebook, whilst used primarily as a social tool now, are undoubtedly laying the ground work for other real time streams of information.  In addition to their technology, Google have also recently changed internal architecture at the Googleplex, with their ‘Caffeine‘ technology enabling a must faster indexing of the web.

One of their more interesting products that we have a lot of fun playing around with internally, is Google Insight’s for search. This tool allows users to see both past trends of searches that happened previously on Google, and it also offers an analysis of future potential trends. Think of it like a stock market for searches. If there is a peak in the results, for example for searches such as the Winter Olympics, you can pretty much pinpoint an event. i.e The Winter Olympics in Canada happened around February.

Applying this logic to the property market provides pretty interesting results, for example – if we want to drill down into specific searches that happened in particularly countries, we may be able to identify if searches within the property sector are on the up, or still on the way down. Take a look at some of these searches and the associated results.

The following is a graph showing the trend for ‘searches in Northern Ireland’, for property, over the past number of years. It pretty much reflects what happened in the property market – with a serious lack of confidence, the second half of 2007, and after September the 11th. It also shows a gradual increase in volume of searches, indicating consumer confidence if nothing else. Granted, it is no-where near what it was, but a positive incline none the less.

Searches for Property in Northern Ireland.

Another tell tale indicator of the market, would be the number of sale searches, verses rentals across Google. The graph shows a gradual increase in rentals, although sales searches are still greater in number. Searches for ‘house prices’ are indicated by the red line on the graph, and follow closely the pattern for sale searches.

The jobs market should also indicate the general state of the economy. Searches for “belfast jobs” – one of the highest searched terms on the web should reflect the current state of unemployment in the city. According to Google, we are pretty much hitting our peak right about now, and there’s still a number of people looking for work.

Searches for “Belfast jobs”

This is obviously not an exact science, and the tool suffers from the same issues mentioned with house prices- the data is still out of data, but as Google continue to develop this tool, improve the predictive algorithm (perhaps even using some of the data from their finance product) – and integrate it further with the real time web, it will most certainly become an important tool for predicting market swings. Combine that with live data from government departments (supplied direct to Google via a feed?) – with data from products such as Google checkout (number of purchases over time with average price of purchase), with existing organic and PPC data– and Google could have a pretty interesting tool for predicting the economy.

About PropertyPal

Today’s guest blog comes from Paul Anthony, who works as Internet Marketing Manager for Northern Ireland’s largest property website, PropertyPal.com. His role within the company includes managing all search engine optimisation, search engine marketing and social media activity.

PropertyPal.com is Northern Ireland’s number 1 property website, displaying details of more homes for sale and rent than any other website. It has around 95% of all properties for sale and rent, and at any time stocks over 40,000 properties to buy or rent. Including at time of writing approximately 5,000 houses for sale in Belfast, and 1,770 houses for rent in Belfast
It is independently owned and has more properties to rent in Belfast than any other Northern Ireland website since January 2010.
What do you think?  Let us know in the comments.

Most of us in the industry knew this was coming and there was speculation as to the effect it will have on the results in both relevancy and of course with Search Engine Optimisation. Many people joined the initial google testing experiment that allowed them to gather data on social search and allowed us to see what the results where of doing various searches under different conditions, such as when your logged into your google account and when your not, different geographical locations and of course trying to account for your particular social network and the influence it will have on the results but from the information in the post I think Google have went even further. (I can see some SEO’s starting to scratch their heads right now).

Google Social Search

According to Google (and aside from suffering a minor baby boom in their offices) they have been enjoying the creation and integration of social search as they see it as a major way to increase the accuracy of results for individuals due to the trust factor involved with a social network.  For example, when you perform a search, traditionally you count on Google to return the most relevant results for that search but once that process is complete, you are basically at the “mercy” (for lack of a better way of putting it) of the resulting website, its information, content and brand.

Once you establish that the website is authentic, something we do very quickly if the brand is recognisable such as Amazon, E-Bay or similar, we continue the decision making process about the host site and whether we wish to continue the transaction, book the flight, make the enquiry or contact them by phone etc. and now social search brings a whole new aspect to this process.

Social Search Consequence

By including your own social network in the results, effectively Google are increasing the need for a good quality brand, integrity and high level of service from businesses as we can see references to the products, the recommendations, the complaints or the company name from a group of people that are on line, connected to you and whom you already know and consequently trust (to varying degrees of course) and the experiences that they have had with the subject you are searching for.

Having found someone who has already experienced something first hand, and whom you have a relationship with, you cna then gather feedback and information about the matter at hand directly and on a much more honest and reliable level.

Basically, companies (and indeed individuals) need to be on their toes now if they want to maintain standards in their every day business practices and this will mean offering much more personal, polite and direct customer service.  Not a bad thing in my opinion!

Social Search Setup

Their is no Opt in or opt out of social search it seems and Google have said that results will appear whether you are signed in with your Google account or not.  This in itself has annoyed some people as it means the standardisation of results, where the number 1 result for “Product A” is he same for both you and me, has effectively been disrupted (but not removed yet) as depending on the size of the searches social network and their activity, the social part of search will serve to produce different results for each and every individual and this cannot be managed or manipulated by any third parties in the same capacity as a website can be created and coded or grown to place for specific search terms in results.

This will in itself make for a very interesting year ahead and a very different view of search engines.

Anyway, have a watch at the video below to see what other features social search will include and if you feel like it, don’t be scared to pipe up and leave your opinions on social search and what it means in the comments below.  I would be very interested to hear another point of view.

Google is a search engine, it searches for stuff.  Here are some nice buttons to link to your Google profile or anything else you think is appropriate and associated with Google itself.

Check out more Social Media Icons Badges and Buttons.

As usual, click any of the images to enlarge it then right click and select “save as” to download the icon to your computer.

Source: credits for the sites and artists who made these cool icons badges and buttons.

While companies that perform search engine optimisation would know the rules and guidelines for SEO by simply reading and following the official google SEO handbook, this simply covers the technical aspects of approaching website optimisation according to Googles (and most other Search Engines) requirements.

Adopting the correct mentality

Most people I speak to are under the impression that with search engine optimisation there is some secret technique or method by which you can guarantee reaching that number 1 position on the search results and the benefits of traffic associated with it and they view this aim with a very selfish attitude, an attitude of “I deserve to be there because I have a great product/service/idea so I should have no problems making it work for me”.  This is absolutely and completely the wrong mentality to adopt.

Google’s perspective – its a business

Here are the facts.

Yes its true, Google is a business and a damn successful one. The majority of us however forget this and see it as something that’s free, and here to cater to our needs (search), and herein lies my point. Googles business is essentially as a service provider and its main focus is to provide results to searches, but not just any old result plucked out of thin air. Imagine you performed a search and the results did not satisfy.  Would you stick around and continue to use that service?

No, you wouldn’t, you would change and use a service that provides RESULTS that are relevant to you and the search you are performing. Google realise this, but businesses tend to forget this when they approach the market via search engine optimisation. Remember Google owes you nothing. It owes its users something very specific however and that is quality results.

Mental Shift towards Quality Content

Its time for businesses to make a mental shift when its comes to SEO.  Google will list you, and rank you for any given keyword or phrase at different levels but its all based around one thing.  Quality. There is absolutely no point in a business (or  individual) posting content and trying desperately to rank it when it simply cannot compete with other content of a higher quality.

What is quality content then?

This is the ultimate question.  Who or how is it  decided what is quality content and what makes information more valuable or of a higher quality than another? For me it is dictated by a specific set of factors but in reality it could be range of different aspects that are decided by YOU not by Google. Quality content cannot really be defined unless you are aware of who you are and what people want and the relationship between these two variables. I believe that Google are continually adapting to meet this need. The algorithm created by Google, at this time, relies heavily on backlinks to decide where and what quality content is.

Google looks at the amount of backlinks that a set of information has as a vote of confidence, a thumbs up or a recommendation from readers and visitors and ranks that information accordingly. They hate it when people pay for these recommendations and that means allowing money to influence decision makers and provide backlinks for financial gain as their point of view is that the backlink should be freely given due to the quality of the content or the level of satisfaction the viewer has gained from reading or watching the information provided.

Of course, people do pay for links and sites charge for giving them. My advice?  Dont, its simply not worth getting penalised or removed completely from the rankings for the “quick” method of generating backlinks with money.  You and your visitors are much better served by spending that same money, time, effort or expertise by creating strong content people will enjoy.

So what is the point of Search Engine optimisation then?

This doesn’t mean that search engine optimisation (SEO) is not without merit, its a matter of deciding the context and merit of focusing your efforts and achieving goals. SEO is continually taken out of context, at least in my experience, and people are continually under the expectation that by performing it then they are guaranteeing results.  Any SEO preformed is only as good as the website it is performed upon so what makes people think that slapping together a basic site with little valuable assets and then performing SEO will get them anywhere.  I’m afraid it simply doesn’t work like this.

Dont try and outsmart Google, work with it.

The whole point of SEO is to make your website match the criteria set out by Google and ensure your site is meeting these requirements to the maximum effect, that’s what optimisation means.  Basically you want to follow the rules as closely as possible so when you publish information Google is happy to list and rank it.  But that’s the first step in getting rankings, it wont necessarily produce these backlinks you need to help increase the importance of the information itself.  That can only be given by the people who want to read it and give value to it freely, and you cannot always influence that decision, unless your content is top quality. (Again that word quality).

The point is, don’t try and make Google make you number 1,  make Google want you to be number 1.

The more useful, helpful or quality your content is to your target audience the more it will rank, its really that simple and churning out repetative, meaningless information will not endear you to search egnines or users alike.  It is pretty obvious you cant beat it with under hand tricks or ways and means of rewriting the same old stuff again and again.  No one will want to read it, and why would they. Get creative, get relevent, get real.

Whether its a nice and cuddly monster or a salivating grotesque entity that gives you nightmares all depends on your point of view really, but lets face it, its not the entity it started out as many years ago. In my time on line Google has been both a nightmare inducing beast as it has become more corporate in its structure and also in a complete reversal it is one of my favourite and most visited sites (if not the most visited site on line).

How have they managed to achieve this?

We are all a little familiar with the story of Google having started in a dorm in Stanford University, their overview and history is readily supplied on the Google Corporate Overview page so lets break it down.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Point of fact, we tend to forget this when involved in marketing, indeed it is only in recent years that we have accepted it as a community and also as a result of Google having edited their search algorithm continually and never really telling anyone how it works. Its a simple truth that to work with them on this is not only beneficial to them as a service provider but also us, as users, developers, designers and marketers in both the long term and short. If it isnt good enough, interesting enough, or valuable enough then quite frankly it wont rank.

Or does it?

As a first step to fulfilling that mission, Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new approach to online search that took root in a Stanford University dorm room and quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognized as the world’s largest search engine — an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.

Right, that last bold line has various connotations. Firstly, Google isnt perfect, lets be clear on that, they know it but we tend to forget. Secondly, its easy to use yes, but low and behold, usually returns relevant results. Again, this tells us that google changes.  If they are not producing relevant results they will try to address it to create relevant results in order to satisfy the searchers needs.

When you visit www.google.com or one of the dozens of other Google domains, you’ll be able to find information in many different languages; check stock quotes, maps, and news headlines; lookup phonebook listings for every city in the United States; search billions of images and peruse the world’s largest archive of Usenet messages — more than 1 billion posts dating back to 1981.

Here is the reflection of the size of corporate Google today. Over 1 billion posts since 1981 (posts are being refered to as pages I would assume). Also bear in mind this was taken from the Google.com page and not the localised version for .co.uk or .es etc.

It was over this period that Google became a monster for me. I was continually working with clients who wanted to rank well but Googles tune changed so quickly and so erratically that it became more and more nightmarish to work with, to the point that it felt like you where not working with Google but against them.

We also provide ways to access all this information without making a special trip to the Google homepage. The Google Toolbar enables you to conduct a Google search from anywhere on the web. And for those times when you’re away from your PC altogether, Google can be used from a number of wireless platforms including WAP and i-mode phones.

Google’s utility and ease of use have made it one of the world’s best known brands almost entirely through word of mouth from satisfied users. As a business, Google generates revenue by providing advertisers with the opportunity to deliver measurable, cost-effective online advertising that is relevant to the information displayed on any given page.

This makes the advertising useful to you as well as to the advertiser placing it. We believe you should know when someone has paid to put a message in front of you, so we always distinguish ads from the search results or other content on a page. We don’t sell placement in the search results themselves, or allow people to pay for a higher ranking there.

And here we have the reason why I feel in love with Google and search again. It wasn’t actually Goole who fixed the problem, at least not directly. It was the development of the technology, the refinement of the rules and a settling down of the requirements that allowed honest web development to become a feasible option again. For the sake of a better term it was the creation of Web 2.0 and Social Media that made this user resurgence possible and now, it feels like we are somewhat in control.

The secondary aspect that created a corporate google was also the advertising medium and the refinements that have and are taking place with the placement of these adverts.  While quite unobtrusive in general, except on sites which surronded text with adverts of course, I have seen a noticeable difference in the quality and relevance of adverts served to me quite recently, for a change, not actually a bad thing.

So things are changing, Google is changing, people are changing and every single thing associated with search and websites is in a continuous state of flux. The pending emergence of web 3.0, the surge in users for twitter and quite possible a range of developments in the future will only serve to become either a part of the Google corporation or its competition.

Which would you prefer to see?

This wont affect rankings (yet) but I can see it having an effect once this gains momentum and popularity with users and may act as some kind of “vote” helping websites rank higher when more users have them personalised at the number one position within their own accounts, however I´m simply speculating about this at the moment!

For more detailed information about this check out the Official Google Blog here:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your-own.html

It was with a little trepidation I downloaded this PDF and began to read as I wasn’t sure what surprises where in store for me. 20 minutes later and with a sigh of relief, I’m happy to say, I have been completely spot on in the advice I give and follow myself in regards the creation, development and discipline according to Google for good SEO practices.

I will be following on with this handbook to my clients as its simple, straight forward and to the point with little technical jargon so making it a valuable document to pass to clients and potential clients alike. The most important point being that its straight from the horses mouth and no one will be able to argue with that!

Heres the official post from Google Webmaster Central Blog and the PDf of the Official Google SEO handbook is right here.