Google to Announce Zebra Update?

Since the strikes of Panda and Penguin, the online world has been waiting with baited breath for the release of the next black and white monster.

There have been whisperings of skunks, orcas and magpies. But pandas and penguins aren't aggressive animals, and our sources from within Google have told us it will come from an altogether more placid beast...

Behold, The Zebra Update!

Looks menacing doesn't he?

But What Will The Zebra Update Target?

Panda hit on-site elements. Penguin mainly focused on off-site issues. Zebra is going to town on social...

• Too many retweets with keywords included around a link
• Facebook updates with too many shares from people not in your industry
• Any Google+ shares as this will look spammy (Google+ is a graveyard right, so any activity looks suspicious?!)
• Owning a Pinterest page - brands only use these for SEO benefit no?

If you've been creating great content which may be being shared extensively by people on the web, some of which might not be bloggers in your niche, then start looking over your shoulder. The Big G doesn't want anyone messing with their rankings.

It's time the social web started cleaning itself up, The Zebra Update is coming...

Source:- http://www.webmarketinggroup.co.uk/Blog/google-to-announce-zebra-update-1805.aspx

Graph Search SEO

 If There Will Be Graph Search SEO, Marketers Will Be The New SEOs

So I'm one of the SEOs looking forward to a time when Facebook's future Graph Search platform, will open the door to a new segment of the SEO population dedicated to ranking Facebook business pages in the Graph Search search results. I really do.

I fully believe all data injected into the Open Graph, either through user engagement on Facebook and/or user engagement on websites/pages using OG widgets, will contribute to the factors involved in ranking Facebook business pages/events in the Graph Search results too - hence the reference to the Open Graph in "Graph Search".

With that said and if I'm correct, user engagement (and not only likes, by the way) will become the "ranking factors" for ranking business pages and that's where the title of this thread comes into play. Who is best to get users interacting with posts, events and a business page in general than Marketers? It's not SEOs.

Most SEOs (whether real or not) are mostly concerned with ranking website pages in the search engine results. There are quite a few SEOs who have a marketing background and of course can even sometimes create and invoke user engagement, but in my many years of working on the net in this industry, I've found very few who can actually do what Internet marketers do.

I myself even sometimes envy them - they've got this power to get people talking, sharing and even screaming if they have to. SEOs may be able to get users to a page, but an Internet marketer can do it too and they can get users moving and shaking while they're there if they have to.

How do you feel about this Internet Marketers? Facebook's just opened up a new door of business for you. Even if my initial premise is incorrect, user engagement will still be a major part of the factors that will rank business pages in Facebook's Graph Results. Are you ready to be called a GSO? A Graph Search Optimizer?

If I'm right, the new SEOs will not only be Internet marketers, but the regular every day folk on Facebook that know how to get people buzzing - those businesses will prosper while generic, cold, dry, ghost-town Facebook business pages will fall by the way side and lose out on a segment of search.

I'm just waiting for someone to coin a decent and catchy term related to Graph Search SEO. GSSEO? GSEO? Maybe GSEO will work. Yes let's go with that!

Facebook Details App Discovery In Graph Search

Facebook became the center of attention this week with its Graph Search announcement. The new feature allows users to search for people, places and things within Facebook using a variety of parameters. It will no doubt benefit the end user, but how will developers make the best of it?

In its weekly Operation Developer Love update, Facebook said that developers will be able to increase their app discoverability by using Graph Search. The social network was already helping apps along with last year’s App Center, but Graph Search may just prove to be more useful. Here’s how Facebook explains it:

Apps are now more discoverable on Facebook with Graph Search. In addition to showing up in search results based on your app’s name, they can show up in search results based on criteria like “strategy games my friends play” or “apps my friends who live in San Francisco use.” To optimize your app for Graph Search, please make sure your app details are up-to-date and that your app is properly categorized.

What Does Facebook Graph Search Mean For SEO?

Facebook has dominated the conversation in the tech world this week (for several reasons), but especially because of its unveiling of Graph Search. We’ve been waiting for years for Facebook to “get into search” and “take on Google,” and we appear to have the company’s first real attempt at doing so.

Do you think Facebook has a legitimate shot at cutting into Google’s share of the search market? Let us know in the comments.

It is very clear that Graph Search is not going to instantly come out and reduce Google’s piece of the search pie very significantly. It’s in very early beta and limited preview. Facebook says it is rolling out slowly, and many who have already signed up to be part of the preview are still waiting for a chance to actually use it. The company knows it has a whole lot of work to do on this product. It’s starting off by focusing on four main areas of search: people, photos, places and interests. These are four major things, but there is so much more that Facebook could (and will) do. Facebook posts and open graph actions will be added in the coming months, according to Mark Zuckerberg. Mobile will eventually be added as well. So will Instagram, and probably plenty of other things in time.

In other words, it’s not so much about what Facebook has unveiled, as what Graph Search could evolve into. Could it evolve into a Google killer? Probably not, but who can say for sure? The reality is that it doesn’t have to be a Google killer to be successful, and a useful tool for Facebook users. More time spent on Facebook (especially time spent using search on Facebook) has the potential to draw away some amount of ad spend from Google to Facebook, which really could hurt Google to some extent.

Facebook has a legitimate shot at being a real player in search because, for one, it has over a billion users already, and for two, because it can provide answers that Google can’t. There is plenty of room for Facebook Graph Search to flourish with or without Google dominating traditional web search, because Graph Search is not traditional web search. In fact, one of the first things Zuckerberg said when he introduced the product on Tuesday, was that it is “not web search”.

Facebook does utilize its partnership with Bing to add the web search element, and as Liz Gannes at All Things De writes, Graph Search should only help Google’s case for increased competition in search when it comes to antitrust scrutiny.

With Graph Search, We’ll See How Important Social Signals Are To Relevance

On Tuesday, Facebook unveiled Graph Search, an early version of a new kind of social search that will only grow as Facebook adds to it. With this, we should finally get to see just how helpful social signals are to search. It’s been a topic of debate, particularly since Google launched Search Plus Your World (its take on social search, tapping into is Google+ network, along with some other less obvious sources), but the problem with Google’s social search has always been its lack of social engagement, at least compared to Facebook.

We had a brief discussion with blekko CEO Rich Skrenta on the implications fo Facebook’s new offering and social search. He tells us social signals are “critical” for search relevance.

“PageRank originally measured the web’s primary social signal — links,” he says. “Facebook has even better social data which would be great for ranking recommendations. And they could be personalized to you, based on your friends.”

Since the Graph Search announcement, there have been countless articles dissecting the offering with mixed reviews. Some think it’s boring, and some think it’s a major new offering from the social network.

Skrenta says, “It’s a strong start for what is very intriguing product. I’m sure it will evolve over time as well and become even more interesting.”

Of course, much of the conversation has been centered around Facebook competing with Google. Obviously, this isn’t going to kill Google out of the box, and it doesn’t seem likely that it will kill Google in the long run. That doesn’t mean it can’t chip away a piece of Google’s pie. We discussed that more here.

“Facebook Graph Search addresses a completely new class of searches that you can’t do today on Google,” says Skrenta. “So I don’t think it will affect Google at all.”

True enough that Graph Search can tap into a new kind of search, but it does bring along certain kinds of vertical search implications along with it in my opinion, particularly local search. One also has to wonder what it might mean for Bing, which supplements Facebook’s search offering with the kind of search it can’t provide on its own.


News Source:- http://www.webpronews.com