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This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs weekly. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. – Ed.

From Google Squared enhancements to search becoming more social, this week brought a slew of exciting and (we hope) useful search feature releases:

Social Search
Sometimes, there might be relevant content on the web from people in your social circle. For example, learning what your friend thinks about the latest gadget or exotic travel location (e.g. in his or her blog) can help enhance your search experience. Until recently, there was no easy way to find this type of content published by your friends. Last October, we launched Social Search in Google labs to help solve this problem.

After a large number of users opted in and tried out the feature, Social Search has graduated and is available in beta for all signed-in users on google.com in English. We also added this feature to Google Images and gave you a way to visualize your social circle. To learn more about Social Search and how to get better social search results check out this post or this video.

Google Squared single item landing page
Last year we launched Google Squared, an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet. For categorical searches like [us presidents] or [dog breeds], Google Squared produces the type of extracted facts you might be interested in, and presents them in a meaningful way. Starting this week, Google Squared has a new design to better handle queries looking for a single thing, like a specific president or a particular breed of dog. The page is now easier to read and includes multiple images, and you can still add, remove or change the type of facts that are visible.

Example searches: [barack obama] and [boston terrier]

Better labels for Time/LIFE images
In late 2008, we worked with Time/LIFE to digitize several million archival images never been seen before, and made them available in Image Search. At that time, many images in the collection had descriptions and labels and were easy to search for. But some had less descriptive information, making them more difficult to find. Now it’s possible for knowledgeable users to label images and enrich the collection. Over time, we hope the Google community will make the quality of image search better than ever before.

Example: [Cincinnati baseball]. Note the “labels” in the bottom righthand corner.

We hope you enjoy the variety of new features this week.

Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, Search

Read more:
This week in search 1/31/10

Trendspotting Market Research came out with a report about predictions for social media trends in 2010. I found it interesting that the predictions were in 140 characters, Twitter style. It definitely makes it easy to read. From this report, the major trends predictions in 2010 were suggested as mobile, location, transparency, measurement, ROI and privacy.

Some of my favorite predictions included:

• “Mobile becomes a social media lifeline.”
• “Companies get serious about social media, elevating their focus to social business.”
• “By the end of the year we’ll have a new interface for status updates that looks nothing like a microblog.”
• “Search will get more social: real time content in results, information from social network friends to results, using collective information from other web users.”
• “Social media in 2010 will cease being the shiny new object and instead, become part of the everyday lexicon on business.”
• “We’re going to see an explosion of things that use location.”

Are you ready for 2010? Do you have any trend predictions of your own regarding social media?

Read the rest of the report below:

Read more here:
2010 Trend Predictions in Social Media

TenGoldenRules.com VP, Margie Schneider will be hosting another InternetMarketingClub.org Webinar focusing on creative PPC strategies. The event will take place on Wed, Oct 28, 2009 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM EDT and to register, please visit; PPC Strategies Webinar.

Read more here:
InternetMarketingClub.org Presents Webinar On PPC Strategies

Jay Berkowitz will be hosting a free webinar along with Warren Whitlock, Gail Goodwin and @Iconic88 to discuss the best ways of doing business and building your personal brand on Twitter. The event will take place on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM EDT and to register, please visit; The Rock Stars of Twitter Webinar.

Read more:
InternetMarketingClub.org Presents Rockstars Of Twitter Webinar

The Federal Trade Commission has announced that bloggers disclose that are getting freebies or being paid by companies to endorse their products, or else get fined up to $11,000. This is a new policy for bloggers in order to make product information more accurate for consumers.

Social media has become a big part on consumers’ decisions to buy products that this type of policy was going to come up eventually. I think it’s better for a blogger to mention they are either being compensated or getting an item in exchange for a review, so the reader knows that the review is biased or not.

Although it is not binding law, the FTC mentions the following, “In any law enforcement action challenging the allegedly deceptive use of testimonials or endorsements, the Commission would have the burden of proving that the challenged conduct violates the FTC Act.” When in doubt, make sure you note whether or not a company is giving you money or a free product in exchange for a product review.

Read the entire policy straight from the FTC and let us know what your thoughts are.

Go here to see the original:
FTC Announces New Blogger Policy for Endorsements or Testimonials

When your website is included in the organic listings of a search engine result page, there are two important factors that will cause people to click on your listing: rank and messaging. Of course the search engine has the ultimate say in where you rank, and even what your messaging is, but you do have some control over the messaging. Often times in an organic search listing, a snippet of your meta description is included. If your meta description is what shows, it better be inviting if you want a click.

One of the beautiful things about PPC is the ability to test different messaging in ad variations. Once you find the right ad copy to generate a high click through rate, by testing different ads, you can use that copy in the meta descriptions of your webpages. By knowing what messaging causes people to click, you can increase your click through rate in organic search as well.

Credit:
Let PPC Dictate Your Meta Descriptions

Google announced Place Pages on Google Maps, which makes Google Maps even more enhanced than it already is. Using Place Pages, you can now get more information about a place, such as restaurants, retail stores, and other businesses. Place Pages show general information about a place, as well as photos, reviews, web pages and user content.

For someone who is researching the 5th Avenue Apple Store that has never been there, they can already view photos and know how to get there using public transportation, as well as discover that it is open 24/7.

You can even view subway schedules and see what trains run at what station, which could be useful, and avoid an additional step to the MTA website:

If a place page lacks information, it can always be added through community edits or Google Map Maker.

See more here:
Google Introduces Place Pages on Google Maps

Ever wonder how search engines came about? I didn’t realize it went all the way back to the late 1950s! Search Engine Journal created an interesting timeline of search engine history, dating back to 1957 when the predecessor of the internet started through ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency). Following that the concept of the World Wide Web was created in 1980, the Archie search engine created in 1989, the creation of Yahoo in 1994, and to the present day when Bing was launched. For someone who started using the internet in the late 90s (1998 to be exact), and being an internet marketer today, I found the beginnings especially interesting. The evolution of search is fascinating knowing how advanced it has become today.

See the original post here:
Interesting Timeline of Search Engine History

Bing has announced its next tactic to compete with Google in search. They are taking image searching a step further with “Visual Search”. Visual Search returns thumbnail images for specific search results. The main feature of Visual Search is the ability to refine a query, thus making the thumbnails that no longer match fly off the results page. The remaining thumbnails are in turn resorted.

The value of Visual Search is the blending of structured data into search results. Bing is pushing the envelope by returning structured data in a wider range of searches, including sports, travel, and product reviews.

View original post here:
Bing Looking to Increase Market Share with Visual Search

Digg has now decided to add nofollow tags to external links on their website, which is unfortunate for those who use Digg as part of their linkbuilding strategy. This does not, however, count Digg out for building links. They are not adding the nofollow tag to all links, but rather just the ones they are not too sure about because they don’t just want to vouch for a website.

In order to get a do follow link on Digg, a story has to look real to them. Popularity is a good indicator to Digg that a story is real. For the linkbuilder, it is now more important than ever to publish relevant, valuable content on Digg that people will actually want to read and join the conversation. This is how the story will reach a threshold of popularity that Digg finds acceptable to give out do follow links.

View post:
New Linkbuilding Challenges on Digg

There is a thin line between optimizing a website for search engines and optimizing it for users. In order to get the content and keywords onto a page that are necessary to boost search engine rankings, it is often the case that usability is compromised. If your page is totally optimized for search engines, but compromises usability, you may be able to drive a lot of traffic to the page, but only convert a small amount of it. On the other hand, if you optimize the page only for usability, leaving off loads of content, you may be able to better convert the traffic that comes, but there will be far less traffic.

A good way to find the best balance is analyzing your analytics. In Google Analytics, for example, you can set up goals used to track conversion on the website. Test your goals on different pages. Optimize a page for search engines and track conversions on that page. Optimize another page for the users and track the same conversions on that page, but as a separate goal. This will let you see if you generate more conversions from the search engine optimized page, which should generate a high amount of traffic with a low conversion rate, or from the user optimized page that should generate a smaller amount of traffic but a higher conversion rate.

Excerpted from:
Balancing SEO and Usability

According to McAfee, Inc., celebrity searches can be hazardous to your computer, containing viruses, spyware, adware, spam and phishing. Actress Jessica Biel has been the top search that has a one in five chance of getting one of these threats to your computer.

“Cybercriminals are star watchers too – they latch onto popular celebrities to encourage the download of malicious software in disguise,” McAfee’s Jeff Green said in a statement.

“Consumers’ obsession with celebrity news and culture is harmless in theory, but one bad download can cause a lot of damage to a computer.”

Other celebrities that may cause a threat to your computer were Beyonce, Jennifer Aniston, Kim Kardashian and Miley Cyrus.

Who would have thought that cybercriminals use celebrities to spread viruses? Just a heads up to everyone to be careful when you search for the latest celebrity news. I stick to People.com.

Here is the original:
Celebrity Searches Can Be Hazardous… To Your Computer

With the rise of social media, blogging, forums, reviews, and bookmarking in the internet marketing realm, sentiment analysis is gaining importance. The issue, however, is that while still in its infancy, sentiment analysis is still challenged by the task of translating human emotion into hard data.

Nevertheless, the importance of monitoring online social outlets is essential to the success of a business and can allow businesses to act fast when issues arise. By analyzing the sentiment of online discussions about your business, you can know if a decision you recently made was good or if customers are unhappy.

Monitoring and analyzing sentiment is only half the battle. It is important to join the conversation and offer solutions to problems, explanations of misinformation, etc. With your brand having a strong online presence in social media, you can quickly reach many customers and keep them happy.

The rest is here:
Are You Analyzing Sentiment?

Google has announced several new features to Google Reader which makes it easy to share posts through a variety of social media, blogging, and bookmarking websites. Specifically, the “Send To” feature will let you simultaneously send all of your shared items to the servicess you select.

To select what services you want to share posts on, visit the settings page in Google Reader and click on the “Send To” link at the top right. Select all of the services you want to share on, such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, or Digg, and your shared information will automatically be sent to those services.

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Use Google Reader To Share Posts

..it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. So true. I think this video explains a lot about how much Social Media has made an impact in today’s society. This video, created by Erik Qualman features some interesting statistics about social media.

I can relate with the following statistic (in about 6 months, that is) – “1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media.”

Another one that I found interesting – “If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour.”

I also agree that more people take into account user reviews over advertisements.

There are a lot more in this video below and I think the video was created in a very clever way.

Source:
Social Media is Not A Fad…