Videos can be used to market to current customers as well as prospects. We create powerful video presentations for our customers that have become effective tools for educating their website users.  Check out this video for a delivery company.  Videos bring your business to life!

As always, there are lots of new announcements floating around at Google. This is equally important for an internet marketing agency as it is for the casual surfer.  For instance, in the never ending quest to make things easier for web users, Google has a new tutorial aimed at making video publishing easier to understand. Nelson Lee, the Video Search Product Manager, has narrated a new video, “Video Sitemaps 101: Making your Videos Searchable” that explains how videos are indexed, and how to create sitemaps for videos.

Google has also recently acquired a new company known as Metaweb. This is a company that maintains a database of real world things that is going to combine with Google to help make each user’s search a better experience. Google has recognized over time that providing meaningful results is largely about providing results that offer information about things that exist in the real world. This is where Metaweb is going to help provide better results.

Metaweb works to help provide answers. They will assist in providing richer snippets and a search answers feature. So you can ask the engine about events in a given city and quickly get a list of events that are taking place, as well as what dates they’re taking place on. You can ask questions, such as which women have won Oscars in their twenties, and quickly see the results. Practical answers to specific searches are getting better than ever.

Location Extensions have been altered slightly as well. Now, instead of just being able to attach a single business address to an AdWords ad, you can now attach multiple addresses. That way, if a business has more than one location in an area, a customer can quickly find the closest and most convenient location to them.

Google is viewed by Microsoft and Yahoo as the largest threat online, and the two companies are combining to help each other try to supplant Google at the top of the search engine heap. They are currently doing this by having Yahoo display Bing search listings, in exchange for search traffic (up to 25%).

This has had some effect. ComScore has recently appraised that the search market share enjoyed by Google has fallen in June. In May, the figure was 63.7%, but in June it dropped to 62.6%.  For four months now, Google has been losing in its share. Its recent high was at 65.5% in February. Part of that loss can be explained by the growth of Yahoo. Currently, its rate is set at 18.9% of searches, an increase of .6% from last month. In February, when Google was at their recent high, Yahoo was down to 16.8%, for a 2.1% growth over the last four months.

Bing has been the company that has seen the steadiest growth in the search sector. For thirteen months in a row now they have been growing their search presence. In June, they came in at 12.7%. A year ago, they were only at 8.4%.

Yelp offers some important information about their review filters. First of all, it’s intentional that they don’t disclose too much information about their criteria for ‘established users’. Otherwise, the system would be too easy to abuse. They also try to discourage people that own businesses from soliciting reviews. Otherwise, it’s too hard to get unbiased and honest reviews.

Sometimes, a legitimate review might get filtered. This is a process that happens due to the algorithm and, while it’s unfortunate, it’s all part of the greater effort to make a better review site that people want to use. It’s also important to note that the review filter doesn’t actually delete reviews. Reviews are still on profile pages, they just don’t get syndicated onto business pages. When reviews come and go on a business page, it has to do with the user’s status, not the review itself.

You happen to receive a phone call from someone that identifies his or her self as being a Google representative.  Don’t jump to the conclusion that it’s a phone scam.  It has been confirmed by Mike Blumenthal (of Google) that these phone calls are an element in Google’s venture to tidy up local business records and information.  Certain facets are worth identifying. 

I’m confident that everyone can appreciate that Google’s attempt to tidy up the issues of spam in Google Places and Maps.  The implementation of these phone calls originates from the verification policy which is meant to ensure that all community changes that are made to your business listing are, indeed, accurate.  In other words, if someone attempts to edit your listing, whether it’s an internet marketing agency or an individual, Google may call you directly to ensure that accuracy of the changes.  This is astonishing that Google is going to such great lengths as to provide business owners with this level of security.  This is a good thing, right?  Of course, but as with most other things…where good comes, bad will follow. 

Once word spreads that Google is making phone calls to businesses, scammers will indeed capitalize on this scenario.  As a bad guy scammer, it would be easy to simply pretend that they are calling on behalf of Google and easily obtain data from unsuspicious business owners.  This could be really bad.

In fact, Google prohibits their reps of providing call back numbers and contact information to local business owners.  Google reps and employees are not required to provide any identification!  So much for a sense of trust in the authenticity of phone calls.  It’s become common knowledge that certain business entities will never contact you with the purpose of obtaining certain (confidential) information.  In fact, online banks provide clear warnings to their clients that as a client, you will never be asked to provide account details via email.  Paypal follows the same model.  Suspicious emails have become so widespread that business owners have learned to instinctually ignore them. 

For years Google has instilled their reputation of remaining a silent body and that nobody will ever directly hear from them.  This abrupt shift in Google’s behavior by phoning the public has potential to be a great thing.  However, I would insist that Google implements a verification policy of some kind in order for business owners to substantiate the legitimacy of the phone call.  Google hasn’t spoken too much about this new activity but having read this, and in the event that you receive one of these calls from Google, I highly suggest that you take advantage of this extraordinary occasion.  Solicit as much information as you can in regards to Google Maps and Google Places.

The First Amendment

The importance of the first amendment is incredibly important to all of us that operate online and off. Whether or not you search, use Twitter, air grievances about your government, express your religion, upload content to the internet, or communicate with your member of Congress, you need the rights that this amendment guarantees.  This is equally important to an internet marketing agency as it is to the casual web surfer.

As part of the celebration of this amendment, up until July 25^th, you can submit a 30 second video to celebrate your support for this amendment. This is a part of the 1 For All campaign which is aimed at highlighting the importance of these rights. The best videos are going to be featured at the Newseum in D.C., on TV, and on YouTube.

Viacom vs. YouTube

A summary judgment was recently handed down in regards to the Viacom vs. YouTube lawsuit. The ruling stated that the DMCA protected YouTube against any allegations of copyright violation. The DMCA (digital millennium copyright act) helps to bolster the agreement that when YouTube (the Premiere League is also included in this ruling) and similar operations are working with copyright holders to manage rights, they are protected from copyright violation charges.

Google in China

A difficult situation faced by Google lately has been their challenge to operate Google in China while abiding by Chinese law. The Google.cn problem was that Google was unwilling to censor search results. This problem was addressed by sending users searching at Google.cn to the Hong Kong domain (google.com.hk) instead, but the Chinese government has stated that this is unacceptable, and that the redirect could lead to a non-renewal of the ICP license. This would cause Google.cn to shut down.  As a result,  Internet marketing also faces a challenge for chinese based companies looking to capitalize on SEO services.

The first approach used by Google was that, instead of issuing an automatic redirect, they would provide certain services on the Google.cn page itself which didn’t need to be censored. This included things like music and translation. That way, uncensored results can be provided from the Chinese domain, while those needing to do a proper search can be redirected to the Hong Kong domain instead.

The redirect is planned to end entirely so that all users will land on the Google.cn page. Google is dedicated to not censoring itself, but is also focused on finding ways to work within the laws of the countries in which it is operating. The goal is that a solution can be found that will leave the government content and provide the public with the service that they expect from Google. 

Google Mobile:

Both the iPhone App Store and the Android marketplace have been growing like mad over the last year. When spending your money on Apps, usually you want to do a little research before purchasing…which is where Google comes in to play. Any Internet marketing agency should take note of this, as SEO may become important in the consumer acquisition of apps.  Google has made some changes to their searches when you’re searching from an Android device or iPhone that makes it easier than ever to research and buy a new App.

When you search for information on an App while using Google.com from a mobile device, you’re going to see results in a new way. You’ll have information such as its reviews, publisher, and price clearly displayed. You’ll also find links to information about that App. Finally, you’ll also see a link displayed where you can go right to the applicable store (Android Marketplace or IPhone App Store) to make a purchase of the app, which will be displayed at the top of the results pages. 

Security Changes at Google: 

There has been a new addition to the way that people can search for information using the most popular search engine in the world. Now, if people want to search at Google while keeping those searches more secure and private, they are going to have the option of accessing a SSL encrypted version of the Site. This is going to be very easy to access, and secure searches can be executed simply by visiting https://www.Google.com rather than http://www.Google.com. 

While secure searching is certainly going to offer an improved user experience for people worried about search security, there are some questions that this is going to bring up for search engine marketers. An important part of search engine marketing is always keyword research. SSL blocks most analytics programs ability to access referral data, meaning that marketers may be unable to retrieve the search terms that people are using to access websites. This could have an effect on the ability to craft the most effective SEO and PPC campaigns possible. It remains to be seen how Google Analytics will be able to interact with and access data from the secure search site. 

Google Maps – Transit Changes:

One of the things that can be the most difficult to figure out when you’re visiting a new city is how the transit system works. Google Transit has made it easier than ever to access the transit information that you need from their Maps application.

When traveling in a new city, it’s not enough to just know where the train or transit stations are, you also need to know the details of their routes in order to make use of them. A new feature that can be accessed from the left hand panel in Google Maps is going to provide you with access to all this information. You can search for a transit station, and then colored lines will show you which transit types go where, and which stations are on which routes. You can see departure times for rail trains, and the next departure of other types of transit like subways and buses.

Real Time Image Searching:

The information that is part of the social web has been incorporated into Google search for a while now through the use of real time search results. This provides people with the ability to get the most up to date information available on the hottest topics. However, this has to date only been text based information, but is now going to be expanded to include more rich content like images. If you want to enable real time search results to include images, just go to “Updates” on the left hand side. Then click “Updates with Images” so that you can see that latest images uploaded by the web on the subject that you are searching for.

Google’s philosophy is quite simple: Follow the rules and the results will follow. The following article, taken from Google’s corporate website, talks about Google’s philosophy. At CCS, we follow a lot of these core principles. We work in a casual environment but our work and commitment to customers is serious. Our prime goal is to understand our customers’ needs and help them achieve their goals. We do this through continous education and process improvements, and by keeping abreast of changes in technology. All the ten things listed below make perfect business sense in this day and age.

Google’s Philosophy
Ten things we know to be true

“The perfect search engine,” says co-founder Larry Page, “would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.” When Google began, you would have been pleasantly surprised to enter a search query and immediately find the right answer. Google became successful precisely because we were better and faster at finding the right answer than other search engines at the time.
But technology has come a long way since then, and the face of the web has changed. Recognizing that search is a problem that will never be solved, we continue to push the limits of existing technology to provide a fast, accurate and easy-to-use service that anyone seeking information can access, whether they’re at a desk in Boston or on a phone in Bangkok. We’ve also taken the lessons we’ve learned from search to tackle even more challenges.

As we keep looking towards the future, these core principles guide our actions.

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow. Since the beginning, we’ve focused on providing the best user experience possible. Whether we’re designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line. Our homepage interface is clear and simple, and pages load instantly. Placement in search results is never sold to anyone, and advertising is not only clearly marked as such, it offers relevant content and is not distracting. And when we build new tools and applications, we believe they should work so well you don’t have to consider how they might have been designed differently.

2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
We do search. With one of the world’s largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better. Through continued iteration on difficult problems, we’ve been able to solve complex issues and provide continuous improvements to a service that already makes finding information a fast and seamless experience for millions of people. Our dedication to improving search helps us apply what we’ve learned to new products, like Gmail and Google Maps. Our hope is to bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas, and to help people access and use even more of the ever-expanding information in their lives.

3. Fast is better than slow.
We know your time is valuable, so when you’re seeking an answer on the web you want it right away – and we aim to please. We may be the only people in the world who can say our goal is to have people leave our homepage as quickly as possible. By shaving excess bits and bytes from our pages and increasing the efficiency of our serving environment, we’ve broken our own speed records many times over, so that the average response time on a search result is a fraction of a second. We keep speed in mind with each new product we release, whether it’s a mobile application or Google Chrome, a browser designed to be fast enough for the modern web. And we continue to work on making it all go even faster.

4. Democracy on the web works.
Google search works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting links on websites to help determine which other sites offer content of value. We assess the importance of every web page using more than 200 signals and a variety of techniques, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, which analyzes which sites have been “voted” to be the best sources of information by other pages across the web. As the web gets bigger, this approach actually improves, as each new site is another point of information and another vote to be counted. In the same vein, we are active in open source software development, where innovation takes place through the collective effort of many programmers.

5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
The world is increasingly mobile: people want access to information wherever they are, whenever they need it. We’re pioneering new technologies and offering new solutions for mobile services that help people all over the globe to do any number of tasks on their phone, from checking email and calendar events to watching videos, not to mention the several different ways to access Google search on a phone. In addition, we’re hoping to fuel greater innovation for mobile users everywhere with Android, a free, open source mobile platform. Android brings the openness that shaped the Internet to the mobile world. Not only does Android benefit consumers, who have more choice and innovative new mobile experiences, but it opens up revenue opportunities for carriers, manufacturers and developers.

6. You can make money without doing evil.
Google is a business. The revenue we generate is derived from offering search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed on our site and on other sites across the web. Hundreds of thousands of advertisers worldwide use AdWords to promote their products; hundreds of thousands of publishers take advantage of our AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to their site content. To ensure that we’re ultimately serving all our users (whether they are advertisers or not), we have a set of guiding principles for our advertising programs and practices:
• We don’t allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they are relevant where they are shown. And we firmly believe that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find – so it’s possible that certain searches won’t lead to any ads at all.
• We believe that advertising can be effective without being flashy. We don’t accept pop-up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you’ve requested. We’ve found that text ads that are relevant to the person reading them draw much higher clickthrough rates than ads appearing randomly. Any advertiser, whether small or large, can take advantage of this highly targeted medium.
• Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a “Sponsored Link,” so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust our objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.

7. There’s always more information out there.
Once we’d indexed more of the HTML pages on the Internet than any other search service, our engineers turned their attention to information that was not as readily accessible. Sometimes it was just a matter of integrating new databases into search, such as adding a phone number and address lookup and a business directory. Other efforts required a bit more creativity, like adding the ability to search news archives, patents, academic journals, billions of images and millions of books. And our researchers continue looking into ways to bring all the world’s information to people seeking answers.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.
Our company was founded in California, but our mission is to facilitate access to information for the entire world, and in every language. To that end, we have offices in dozens of countries, maintain more than 150 Internet domains, and serve more than half of our results to people living outside the United States. We offer Google’s search interface in more than 110 languages, offer people the ability to restrict results to content written in their own language, and aim to provide the rest of our applications and products in as many languages as possible. Using our translation tools, people can discover content written on the other side of the world in languages they don’t speak. With these tools and the help of volunteer translators, we have been able to greatly improve both the variety and quality of services we can offer in even the most far-flung corners of the globe.

9. You can be serious without a suit.
Our founders built Google around the idea that work should be challenging, and the challenge should be fun. We believe that great, creative things are more likely to happen with the right company culture – and that doesn’t just mean lava lamps and rubber balls. There is an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments that contribute to our overall success. We put great stock in our employees – energetic, passionate people from diverse backgrounds with creative approaches to work, play and life. Our atmosphere may be casual, but as new ideas emerge in a café line, at a team meeting or at the gym, they are traded, tested and put into practice with dizzying speed – and they may be the launch pad for a new project destined for worldwide use.

10. Great just isn’t good enough.
We see being great at something as a starting point, not an endpoint. We set ourselves goals we know we can’t reach yet, because we know that by stretching to meet them we can get further than we expected. Through innovation and iteration, we aim to take things that work well and improve upon them in unexpected ways. For example, when one of our engineers saw that search worked well for properly spelled words, he wondered about how it handled typos. That led him to create an intuitive and more helpful spell checker.

Even if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, finding an answer on the web is our problem, not yours. We try to anticipate needs not yet articulated by our global audience, and meet them with products and services that set new standards. When we launched Gmail, it had more storage space than any email service available. In retrospect offering that seems obvious – but that’s because now we have new standards for email storage. Those are the kinds of changes we seek to make, and we’re always looking for new places where we can make a difference. Ultimately, our constant dissatisfaction with the way things are becomes the driving force behind everything we do.