One of the good things about Google is that it is constantly updating its indexing and ranking practices to make its search engine better. This of course has some drawbacks. One of those drawbacks is that the search index itself will never be perfect.
Chris Crum at WebProNews illustrates how Google’s freshness update doesn’t always return the most relevant search result for a particular search query. By the same token, freshness also means that Google won’t always return the most recent search result possible for any given search query.
Google’s freshness update makes it more difficult to engineer effective search engine optimization campaigns. But I wouldn’t use that as an excuse not to try. I’m just saying that freshness makes it more difficult to guess how Google will react to the ever-changing landscape of content marketing.
For any given query, Google could return the most relevant-but-dated search results, the most recent search results that come close to matching, or a mixture of the two. We hope that most of the time it will be a mix.
While freshness changes things for Internet marketers and SEOs, it doesn’t change a lot. Our job is still to write the best content we can create about the topics we are writing about. If we do that well and we can beat the competition, then we should get search engine rankings for the short term as well as for the long term.
Googler Jeremy Sussman explains in the following video how Google Maps uses location, relevance, and prominence to rank a business in Google Maps. Watch the video and we’ll talk about what the relevance factor means.
So what is meant by “relevance?”
Relevance in Google Maps means you have done everything you can do as a business to ensure that your Google Places profile matches the search queries that people use to find businesses like yours. Factors that determine relevance include the category you put your business into, keywords you use when writing your description, and other traditional SEO factors.
Of prime importance is category. If your business is a restaurant, you don’t want to categorize it as a butcher shop. That’s a no-brainer. But even subtle differences can make a big difference in Google Maps. For instance, an auto repair shop that does not do body work does not want to list itself as a body shop.
When you write the description for your business, be sure to use keywords that are naturally associated with businesses like yours. Don’t spam, but use natural writing methods to describe your business using the right keywords.
Other items that could affect relevance are how you write your offers within Google Places, whether your domain and business name have a keyword in them, and whether or not you use your business address in your listing.
Relevance is an important factor in Google Maps search. Learn how to make it work for you.
WebProNews visited with some search and social industry professionals in Chicago and came away with a list of 10 discussions in Internet marketing that are relevant for today and the future. Six of those 10 discussions are relevant to social media in at least a small way, but most of them hit the social media relevance factor directly and head on. Here are the 6 discussions on social media you should pay attention to if not get involved in:
Ranking In Real-Time Search – Real-time search has become synonymous with Twitter, and partly Facebook. You can’t argue that this doesn’t have some serious social media marketing connection. Plus, it’s interesting.
The Future Of Online PR – Online PR used to be about getting found in the search engines. Now it’s about getting found. Anywhere and everywhere. More than likely, if you use online PR in the future then you’ll be doing it through at least one social media outlet.
Lessons from Political Social Media – President Obama wasn’t the first to make social media relevant for politics. That was Ron Paul. But the nation’s chief executive did do the most in making it relevant for the rest of us.
Small Businesses And Social Media – Any discussion of social media must involve small business and the ways that average business owners can benefit. This discussion is a must.
Moving Beyond Google – What’s beyond Google? A lot of things. Like Facebook, Twitter, and the loads of other social media websites out there ready for you to leverage for your business.
Optimizing for Mixed Media Search Results – Mixed media optimization involves search, social, video, and viral marketing. Your arsenal of online marketing tools is as varied as your imagination. This is one of the best discussions you’ll ever witness.
That’s six out of 10 and they’re all related to social media in some way. The other four discussions are about search and PPC and they’re just as interesting. Get involved in these discussions now. Or learn more about social media optimization.
Yahoo! was one of the companies that pioneered search engine marketing. Back then it could be called directory marketing. It was one of the first companies to use paid inclusion and the company still relies on paid inclusion to some degree. But not as much as it did in the late 1990s.
Since purchasing Inktomi, Yahoo!s search technology, and Overture, which used to be WordTracker’s main competition, Yahoo! hasn’t really done anything innovative. They dropped Google as their primary search technology provider in 2004 and that kind of sealed the deal on their own fate. It might have been the biggest mistake Yahoo!s ever made. Since then they’ve done nothing but trail and slip.
Yahoo!s incorporation of Twitter into its search results includes an algorithmic formula for obtaining relevance to the search query. You’d have thought that Google would be the first to do that. No, it was Yahoo!
Now the question is, where will search engine marketing go from here? If searchers can rely honestly on relevant real-time search results, will that spawn a whole new industry of spam, or will it lead to greater search satisfaction? Will Yahoo!s reputation climb as a result of this new industry development?
My guess is that Bing and Google will respond with a relevance algorithm attached to their real-time search results as well. Search engine marketing, in the future, will likely be real-time based to some extent. But by how much?
