SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION SEO COMPANY

Back in late November I blogged about the direction of online search and where would it go from here, and as a testament to how rapidly things change in the online world we already have an answer from Google about where they want to take things.

Google Goggles is a new search service offered on mobile phones running Google’s phone operating system, Android. Google Goggles allows the user to take a photo of an object and retrieve information from the web on it. Current requirements to be able to utilise Google Goggles:

* An Android device running Android 1.6 or above
* A QVGA screen
* A camera with autofocus

There are many uses for the service that will change how you search for information:

* Get information instantly by taking photos of:

• Landmarks
• Books
• Artwork
• Products
• Logos
• Wines

* Using the phones internal compass, the camera display can show information about locations such as restaurants relevant to your location and the direction that you point your camera. You’re then able to bring up information on the location (i.e. ratings and comments on restaurants)
* The service can recognise text and using this feature, users are able to scan in information off business cards and save them as contacts directly to the phone

This service is still in development and is not yet able to deliver results as relevant as you would expect via a normal keyword search, however its capabilities will advance through user feedback on the relevancy of their searches and as Google grows their database. Future plans for Google Goggles are to connect it with live updates from social networking sites such as Facebook status posts and Twitter feeds, as well as adding Google’s facial recognition technology (left out of initial release due to its currently limited functionality).

This new technology springs to mind some interesting questions; What will this new technology mean for online marketing? How does Google determine the relevancy of results and analyse images specific to certain topics? How will businesses optimise to generate exposure via this new medium?

From a social perspective, with the potential introduction of facial recognition, what will this mean for privacy? By simply entering a photo you took of someone into the search, will you be able to pull up of online data related to that person from their social networking pages to images to contact details to employment information? Will we have the choice whether or not to be ‘searchable’ online or what information comes up for searches?

This certainly is a space we will be keeping a close eye on.

Official Google Video on Goggles

Visual Demo of Google Goggles Functionality

Microsoft has announced the signed deal with Twitter and Facebook to effectively integrate status updates into the Bing search results. This will definitely move it closer to providing real-time search capabilities. Although search engine giants, Google are already showing Twitter and Facebook results, Bing will be stepping up and offering the entire public Twitter stream.

So how will the Twitter search results work on Bing? Here is an overview of what to expect:

•Tweets updated in real-time: View all tweets “roll in” in real-time by watching the “tweet SERP” update. To view more tweets than what’s displayed on the first page of search results, click “See more tweets about…”
•Results ranked by tweeter’s influence and uniqueness of the tweet: According to Microsoft, “If someone has a lot of followers, his/her tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other tweets, it will get ranked lower.”
•Private tweets remain private: Tweets by users who have private or protected Twitter pages will not be indexed.
•Real-time only lasts so long: Tweets will only be indexed in Bing for 7 days, further indication that Bing intends to use the Twitter integration as a way to capitalize on real-time events and searcher interests. There’s no indication that Bing intends to index and provide a historical record of tweets.

The implications for marketers is that it will provide real-time social data within search result and encourage brands to embrace and try and keep up to the changing consumer search habits as they change. For example, a searcher seeking information on where the latest brand name sale is on, or the waiting time for an up and coming concert. Although the search engines cannot generate results as events are happening, user generated content from Facebook and Twitter may be able to address this.

The key takeouts from this news:
•Big opportunities for companies to
•Marketers who currently use Twitter and Facebook will experience greater importance and potentially traffic. However it will act as a double edged word in that brands will need to closely monitor any negative conversations that come up.
•From an SEO perspective, certain brands and industries may lose potential traffic and opportunity if they have not already taken up social media.
•Social media will continue to grow with search engines as it continues to move towards social commentary to determine data relevance.

Reports on the official Facebook blog claim that it now serves more more than 300 million people around the world.

What does this mean?

To put this into context, the entire US population is just over 304 million and more than 12 times the population of Australia.

Not only that, it is also collecting more revenue than it is currently spending on maintaining the site. Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on the official company Facebook blog:

“We’re also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.”

This means that Facebook will be able to develop and test out more features and products. Just like Google labs, it is allowing users to test out these prototypes by activating or downloading any of the prototypes listed.

From a marketing point of view, this may allow people or organisations’ more ways to connect to their followers. The future of Facebook looks quite rosy and will definitely be something keep an eye on.

Yes that’s right, there are people out there being sacked for surfing on Facebook. This time it happened in Switzerland. A woman took time off work because she could not work in front of the computer and needed rest in bed.

Coincidently the employer found out she was on Facebook and took action from there because she had broken the trust between the company.

“This abuse of trust, rather than the activity on Facebook, led to the ending of the work contract,” the company said.

The woman said she was on Facebook with her iPhone and claimed that the employer have been ’spying’ on her. This was rejected by the company and said her profile was found by a colleague in November.

The popularity of social networking system Facebook has been put to use to benefit the whole community (rather than just used for stalking ex-partners), by the New Zealand police force.

A burgler in a local establishment was overheating in the small room which held the safe, so he took his mask off. When the surveillance cameras captured an image of his face, the police turned to Facebook:

“The offender was identified after a movie and images of him were displayed on Facebook. He was identified from members of the public viewing him on Facebook and also seeing him on TV after the Facebook images were displayed on the news,”

Although it will be unlikely to replace the Dark Knight any time soon, the use of the online community to catch a thief raises an interesting question: where does online privacy begin/end? Although the argument could be made that in this instance it was for the greater good, couldn’t an individual argue that removing photos of themselves in leopard print underwear was for the greater good? Google has been improving their algorithm to index more pages, so perhaps what was once online obscurity will now be in the vision of anyone searching for information about you.

For more information about the New Zealand police Facebook tracking, please look here

The Age Technology section today reports on an Australian, and possibly world first. A default judgement in a case where the defendant did not turn up to court was allowed to be communicated via facebook.

Master Harper [of the ACT Supreme Court] ordered that the defendants in the case could be validly served by the plaintiff sending a message by computer to the Facebook pages of both defendants informing them of the entry of and the terms of the judgement.

Australian courts are regarded as being amongst the most technologically advanced in the world, and this innovation goes to further that claim.

In the largest judgement ever made under the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2004, California based social networking site Facebook has been awarded US$873 million in damages against a Canadian Facebook user, Adam Guerbuez who owns the company Atlantis Blue Capital.

The judgement comes as a result of more than 4 million bogus Facebook messages from members’ profiles being sent by Atlantis Blue Capital. Many of the spammy messages were promoting male enhancement drugs and the like.

“Does Facebook expect to quickly collect $873 million and share the proceeds in some way with our users? Alas, no. It’s unlikely that Geurbez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them (though we will certainly collect everything we can). But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users”, wrote Max Kelly, Facebook’s director of security.

This post on Kid Tech Guru has a copy of the judgement file embedded.

Facebook announced on their blog yesterday that they have now integrated searches on Live.com into the Facebook search box for all US residents. This is a further extension of thepartnership Facebook has with Microsoft that dates back to 2006 when Microsoft first started displaying their ads on the social networking site.

We’re always working on innovative ways to make your experience on Facebook more useful. Toward that goal, today we’ve added Microsoft Live Search to your Facebook search experience (for people in the US). This is the first step in giving you the ability to find content from across the web while using Facebook.

By integrating web search into Facebook, you can increase the information available to share with your friends, family and coworkers on the site. For example, your friend may invite you to an event at a new restaurant. Without leaving Facebook, you can check out the details of the restaurant on the web. Or, say you see photos in your News Feed about a friend’s recent trip to Dubai. Inspired, you can search the web for more information about travel without having to leave Facebook. Along with your search results, you may also begin to see ads for products, services or other things that are relevant to your query.

The feature means that when a users starts typing a search term into the search box they are given the option of searching Facebook or searching the web - meaning users can search without leaving the site. When doing a search of Facebook itself, the results page will have an extra tab of “web” results that a user can click to regardless. Of course relevant ads from Microsoft Adcenter are also displayed with the search results.

The feature is working on my profile also, however the results are very different to those I would recieve searching through NineMSN.

According to SMH, the creator of US TV drama The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin, has signed on with Sony to write a film about the controversial origins of Facebook.  The movie is said to be an adaptation of an upcomming book release called “Face Off” that depicts the back story, including the well-known controversial claims that Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg stol the idea from classmates in college. facebook itself, which now has over 100 million users has distanced itself from the movie idea.

More information in the SMH article.

At the annual Facebook conference for developers, Facebook has revealed its new features to extend its online presence and to maintain its relationship with recent developers of the popular social networking site. Facebook has also revealed its new design as well as “a wave of social Web sites built on top of the information users give to social networks.”

More importantly, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, believes that the future idea of social networking sites is to focus on the decentralisation of social applications. One of these demonstrated is the “Facebook Connect” in which other sites can integrate part of Facebook’s service, where  users are asked for their Facebook login details instead of creating an account on the site to verify their identity.

In regards to the popular applications, Facebook will concentrate on having more meaningful applications rather than applications that clog up the site. Applications will have to meet a criteria of being not only secure but also trustworthy.

For further details on the future of Facebook, please read the New York Times article.