This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff
Our Reaction Upon First Using Google Instant: “Woah.”
By now, nearly everyone in the free world has to have run across Google Instant, the new (optional) Google feature that starts returning results after the first few letters in your search query. Watch this news feature that takes a look inside the Google war room.
This is unquestionably an innovative feature in the search engine world, and there’s bound to be a ripple effect, as Erick Shonfeld points out in a Tech Crunch article:
“Google just found a way to jack up the number of search results you see by doing nothing more than type in a word or two like you always do. Most people can scan results visually and can absorb a lot more information if it is streamed to them in this fashion rather than having to manually click through to see more results. If people get used to this, it will put pressure on Bing and other search engines to quickly follow suit.”
Shonfeld goes on to speculate that SEO will have to change to accommodate various letter combinations to go with the usual key words (for example, “DISH N” or “DISH Net” to go along with the regular keyword, “DISH Network”).
Source: Tech Crunch
Apple Is Now Cool With Some Flash Apps
Even though Apple CEO Steve Jobs has called Adobe technology outdated and unreliable, Apple reversed its Adobe ban enough so app developers that use Flash won’t have to convert their programs for use on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod. However, web sites using Flash are still unreadable on Apple products.
Naturally, Adobe was happy with the development, as the company’s stock rose 12% in the wake of Apple’s policy reversal.
This policy change was part of a collection of Apple’s new guidelines for software developers hoping to sell their programs in the Apps Store. And if you’re looking to create a fart app, don’t bother; Apple explicitly stated they would reject any and all fart apps submitted.
Check Out What’s In Stock Locally With Google’s Local Shopping
Wouldn’t it be nice to know that the store you’re about to visit actually has the product you need on the shelf? With Local Shopping from Google, you’ll know what local store carries your desired product and how much of that product is in stock, provided they are members of Google Places and approved by Google. Although currently only available in limited markets, Local Shopping could become another home run application from Google.
The screen shot below shows what the Local Shopping page looks like:
Source: Google Merchant Blog
Introducing Another Way To Increase Clicks Through Product Search
Google Product Search recently rolled out a new format based on Google.com’s product extensions, but with a small change.
Instead of having to click the “plus box” to view the products and prices, that information is already displayed on the screen, saving the user a click of the mouse and giving them easier access to sift through products they would be interested in.
Source: Google Merchant Blog
The SEOMoz Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) Tool Is Very Accurately Related To Google’s Rankings
This is a pretty mind-blowingly in-depth article from SEOMoz, covering a talk from Ben Hendrickson at the Mozinar conference that SEOMoz hosts. Essentially, it goes in depth about topic modeling, keywords, etc. Importantly, it talks about how on-page keyword usage is quite valuable for SEO. This article also announced the release of SEOMoz’s LDA Tool.
The LDA Tool allows you to type any keyword and a page that you want to find relevance for, and the tool calculates a scored relationship between the two. After a few test runs, it’s pretty clear that pages written for natural optimization carry a higher relevancy for their targeted keywords than keyword stuffed articles.
The tool isn’t an exact match of Google’s algorithm, as much more than keyword relevancy goes into query results, but the LDA Tool is still extremely useful for SEO purposes.
Source: SEOMoz
Google AdWords Small Business Center Debuts
The AdWords Small Business Center is now open! The web site will provide AdWords best practices and important tips needed to run a successful AdWords account.
Whether you’re a beginner, intermediate, or master of AdWords, the AdWords Small Business Center provides various relevant ad strategies, direct access to the Inside AdWords blog, and a forum for users to share information and ask/answer questions.
Source: Google Inside AdWords Blog
My Client Center Reporting Gets Some Changes
Google has made a few changes to My Client Center, including a new interface for the Client Reporting tab. Changes to the interface include:
1. Templates are effectively eliminated, and each report can be the basis for a different one. The “Create Similar” button next to the report allows you to do this.
2. Complex reports can be made quicker and easier, thanks to a new infrastructure.
3. You can now store 100 reports, instead of the previous 15.
4. Security is better, as only email addresses that were invited to the account can receive emailed reports. The access levels can be changed by way of the “Account Access” button in the My Account tab.
Source: Google Inside AdWords Blog
Reporting AdWords Updates
Google announced changes to AdWords reporting in June, and since then has added statistics and features to the Campaigns tab that could only be previously accessed in the Report Center.
AdWords has started moving reports out of the Report Center completely, and new Account, Campaign, and Ad Group reports can’t be created from the Reports tab.
Even more updates and features are on the way, so be sure to read through the whole post to get the full AdWords Reporting update.
Source: Google Inside AdWords Blog
Notable Commentary
From Technology Insiders
The People Behind The Google Algorithm
Tom Krazit looks into the heavy human involvement behind regular maintenance of the Google search algorithm.
Analysis by Tom Krazit, CNet News
The Fate Of Yahoo As A Tech Company
Yahoo gets a lot of traffic thanks to their financial, mail, and sports pages, but the company is falling closer to AOL’s level than that of Google or Apple.
Analysis by Paul R. La Monica, CNN Money
Ten Reasons Ping Won’t Top Facebook
Seeing as Facebook just became the most visited site by unique users around the world, this list should be fairly obvious, but it should be noted that Apple probably isn’t trying to overtake the social media giant.
Analysis by Nick O’Neill, All Facebook
