Social Media for Search

Traditional search has changed dramatically over the last few years, and it looks to be on the brink of (or it's already happening) another shift, a quite important one.

After the introduction of Google's Universal Search SEOs needed to prepare for visibility in what was essentially going to become a Vertical Search for a product. However, it's well known that search results can be manipulated, and despite Google doing it's utmost to deliver the best results, it can still fall short - and that's because it's SERPs are dependent on Mathematical algorithms, not people (obviously that would be impossible!).


So here's where the shift is going. The rise of Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter mean that as long as you have a certain community established within those websites, you can get your answers a lot quicker. Let me give you an example. Let's say your printer breaks down on you. So you send a quick tweet on Twitter - which updates your facebook page - about how your printer just broke and you're on the lookout for a new one. No more than 90 Euros.



Within a couple of hours, you might have some replies from friends or colleagues, or hell, even PC City if they're SEOs are savvy enough to use things like backtweet. These can range from "wow, don't get an Epson" to "I'm sure XX store has got a special on this week" to "I'm selling mine, only 2 weeks old, cos I got it free with my new laptop" etc. etc.

Now if you compare that with a normal SERP, you would likely get a couple of review sites, some branded pages like HP, Epson, etc. but nothing "REAL TIME". It is this freshness of having real people to talk to which can make us think twice about rushing straight to Google, Yahoo! or MSN for something we need. User Generated Content (or UGC) is going to become huge and Content is always King.

Like what you're reading? Please feel free to leave a comment or if you have anything specific to share about your social search, I'd love to hear from you.

For more information about social search, contact me at Barcelona SEO or if you'd like some SEO Training in Barcelona I can come into your office or workplace and teach you.

Google Universal Search

Google has a hard job as it is. Sifting through millions of webistes on a daily basis is a tough enough job, without trying to include other sources. Don't get me wrong - I'm not a Google Geek, but I wanted to try and explain about Google's idea of a Unversal search.

Everybody knows that Google bought YouTube and that shortly afterwards, Video results were incorporated into Google's search results. Apparently Google wants to become as broad as possible, and when the user types in a search phrase, wants to give as many options as possible, be it maps, books, video, images, websites, blogs, etc.

So how does Googlebot decide how to rank the results? As I have already mentioned in previous posts, inbound links to your site highly influence the rankings of your search terms. However, Google is all about the end user, and wants to try and make the experience of using their search engine the definitive one.

A great example of this can be seen if you type "Barcelona Metro" into Google.es. The first 3 results are maps of the Barcelona metro - but the words "map" "plan" or "layout" have not been included in your original search string (or "plano", "mapa", etc.). So why did Google rank these results above other textual based results? The answer is that the end user will have clicked more on the plans and maps of the Barcelona metro whilst using the same search string therefore Googlebot sees this as the most relevant and bumps it up to first place.

The first news about Universal Search was way back in 2007, and SEO's worldwide, I'm sure were worried as to the impact on those hard earned 1st page results. However, sticking to Google's guidelines, and refraining from Black hat SEO can still be a successful method towards gaining the results you want.

I offer courses covering all topics on this Barcelona SEO Blog, including Universal Search and how to maximise your website to exploit the algorithms involved. Please contact me for details or eqnuire about SEO Training in Barcelona.