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.

Vertical Search for 2009 - 17 reasons why you need to re-think your SEO strategy

2009 is going to see a change in SEO with regards Vertical Search. The last quarter of 2008 saw Google introduce some new tools, such as Custom search, Google Wiki and improved Universal search.

Vertical search basically means looking at a slice of a pie. Don't think I'm going mad, it's just the best analogy I can come up with.



Up to now, all SERPS provide a list of websites when any search term is introduced. This is basically a long list of similar sites, one after another, in a horizontal format. Nowadays, however, any search string could throw up results ranging from books to videos, blogs to images, news stories to Twitter comments...as well as your normal website list. This is what's been dubbed as a vertical search, as it's like a slice through the search term and aims to offer as broad a spectrum of results as is possible, therefore giving a perfect user experience (one of the main goals of a search engine).

Never before has it been more important for a business to gain exposure across the whole stream of the Internet. Simple optimisation of your website is no longer the key to a successful online business. You need to be sure to cover as many bases as you can, so that your company can appear in as many of those results the search engines could throw (it's alleged that there are 17 different parameters to a vertical search).

For more information about website optimisation and e-marketing in Barcelona please contact Barcelona SEO and we'll be happy to help.