Will Google's real-time search destroy SEO (and increase value of type-in traffic)

[Vision]

Advent of real-time search -- benefit for search engine users -- but hurtful for SEO experts --

expectation of searching public is to have information now -- in real time -- thus, Google's move toward temporal results --

Will the real time stream drown SEO and in turn, make type-in traffic even more attractive to marketers looking to avoid the SEO turbulence?

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/25384.asp

Will Google's real-time search destroy SEO?

By Rich Cherecwich

Google took the plunge into the world of real-time search earlier this week when it unveiled a "latest news" ticker on its search results pages that aggregates Facebook status updates and tweets moments after publication.

The move is great for consumers hungry for up-to-date news, but it could be bad for SEOs who work hard to push websites to the top of the search engine results. It has the potential to be so disastrous, in fact, that Marty Weintraub, CEO of SEO firm AimClear, said SEOs are "pretty much screwed," MediaPost reports.

Real-time results could only confuse the average consumer and make the concept of SEO even more confusing for marketers who are already flummoxed, according to Weintraub. The real-time results appear at the very top of a results page, which is also the most coveted spot for every online marketer.

When consumers search for a particular brand, there's a chance that the brand's competition will show up in the real-time results. Visiting the competition's website in turn leads Google to create personalized search results for that consumer, meaning that the competitor's page always pops up in their results -- essentially undoing any SEO efforts.

How then can publishers and marketers work around the issue? Weintraub suggests that measuring traffic and site conversations will be the best way to evaluate organic listings. "If organic traffic increases on a page for a specific keyword, then it's reasonable to assume that page's ranking in the 'average' Google result has improved," he said.

 

[south]

I see twitter spam going to a new level..

Seems to this would simply increase the value of direct traffic, thus increasing the value of quality domain names.

 

[radioz]

I see twitter spam going to a new level.

Why would you want to emphasis Facebook and Twitter? Perhaps space alien and wing nut conspiracy theory sites should be bumped to just under the important 'news' that I'll get from Twitter and Facebook (what did Ashton Kutcher eat for lunch - Enquiring minds want to know!)!

Maybe someone will pay us a buck a post to post something about the joys of prune juice or something. First I'll need Facebook and Twitter accounts though!

 

[David G]

I was watching the real time results for a long time (re Tiger Woods) and hundreds of Twitter posts were there, but not one Facebook or MySpace for some odd reason.

From an SEO view this apears to heavily favor frequently updated sites.

P.S. Anyone know of an automated way to update your site on regular basis 24X7.

 

[Mike Cruz]

I was watching the real time results for a long time (re Tiger Woods) and hundreds of Twitter posts were there, but not one Facebook or MySpace for some odd reason.

From an SEO view this apears to heavily favor frequently updated sites.

P.S. Anyone know of an automated way to update your site on regular basis 24X7.

Wordpress APP on G1 imho...

 

[David G]

Wordpress APP on G1 imho...

Can you go into some detail as I am not familiar with either? Thanks.

 

[Poker]

Can you go into some detail as I am not familiar with either? Thanks.

Speaking of google

Best to create updates that provide value to your visitors ie; unique and relevant. If your updates fit that criteria then automated is fine...if they don't, your just spinning your wheels.

 

[David G]

Speaking of google

Best to create updates that provide value to your visitors ie; unique and relevant. If your updates fit that criteria then automated is fine...if they don't, your just spinning your wheels.

How is that done?

 

[Mike Cruz]

Can you go into some detail as I am not familiar with either? Thanks.

Lol, it is not a automated option. Just a wordpress application I have on my G1 Google phone and I update my wordpress sites on there when I don't have a computer in front of me.

 

[DTalk]

This concept appears to load site page position in Google in favour of 'recently mentioned (somewhere)' - and, away from keyword relevance & site content quality, as the main determinant of success...

Its confusing quantity of mentions, with quality of content. They're not the same thing.


It seems to promote more value in being mentioned often, somewhere, anywhere (no matter how vacuous, or idiotic, the mention - and, no matter how shallow the content), than it is to have, say, fewer 'Twitterers' twittering about your site, but have a site that's maybe fantastically relevant to the user.

...ie having your site massively mentioned, appears to be more important than the quality of what the mentioning is about...(lots of twitters doesn't necessarily mean good quality site content - it just means lots of 'noise' about a site. Not the same thing).



...Appears to be an open invitation to mass social network campaigns to compete...

...Plus, an invitation to invest in a super-high-direct-traffic type-in domain, that will compete on its own merits via direct traffic.


I'd say this was a step down in promoting quality content on the net.


Perhaps an unintended consequence...?

.

 

[RTM.net]

Real-time search - or real-time anything - doesn't kill the SEO market; it simply requires SEO to adapt to new venues (Twitter, Yammer, FB) as they evolve.

YHOO & MSFT (with Bing) have run well against GOOG in indexing the real-time space.

As for Twitter being overrun by "spammers" and businesses trying to catch up, well it's the classic tale of cat and mouse. Biz Stone and the few dozen employees at Twitter are trying to cope with the hypergrowth while retaining value for the end-user. Will Twitter succeed in providing the best search of their own content, or will it be a third party search entity ?

Therein lies the possible merger & acquisition potential.

Rob

 

[thejosh]

I just had my first run-in with the real time search. I Googled a domain name I am selling just 1.5 hours after I started a thread on DNF and there was my sales thread.

This is going to be game changing.

 

[David G]

Not so sure about 'game changing' since I see a need to tell G I want to use real-time search by clicking on a somewhat obscure link which says Web - Show Options with my setup for every use and select it from a sub-menu. Not too many people will be doing that. In fact, use is probably rare. If G makes real-time the default search or easier to activate it would have more impact but doubt if they will do that for fear of getting swamped with Twitters.

 

[HarveyJ]

Actually, it's meant to be going live for everyone in February, with opt out... So Trader, you're going to suffer it as well.
I don't see why people are freaking out about it though. IT takes one slot, and is scrollable. Regular SEO still reigns for anything underneath it.
For a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, the same morons that click the paid ads at the top because they think they're the most relevant will also be suckered in by this. And after that, it should be back to business as normal once people realise that those realtime results aren't actually so useful.

In the meantime, I'm finding a way to automate spinnable content for twitter accounts, and getting a dozen or so accounts to basically keep posting ad nauseum with crap.

 

[izopod]

The "ad naseum" twitter crap will get "penalized" via tools supplied to each member. The ultimate "filtering" system if you will. As far as seach goes, I wouldn't be worried about "real time" search from your PC.

The next frontier in SEO and search for that matter is mobile content. Hence the reason a Android launch party/news conference from Google HQ's I presume will happen this Tuesday, Jan 5th.

Making your site "mobile friendly" and ready is going to be key.

Oh, wait a sec. Twitter is again best suited to be crawled for this reason. Their vision has always been on "mobile content".

SO back to square one. Twitter. By 2011, generic twitter usernames will become defacto "internet domain names". Why "tap" in a domain name when you can go to @mcdonalds to get the latest coupons from Mcdonald's.


Twitter is the next "internet" An ecosystem all it's own.

Facebook unless it spins off a "searchable" portion of their site (running into privacy issues) they will go the way of MySpace, and need to find a niche for those 350 million users.

 

[Deleted member 111831]

I'm reading the book Googled right now - probably the most detailed and best account yet of Google's history. I was not a big internet user at the time so I don't remember, but it says that the reason Google was able to create such a better search engine was because they were able to rank pages based upon popularity (by counting links) while other search engines just spewed anything that contained the phrase you were searching for. So Google's results were far more relevant than anybody else's at that time (and may still be today).

I think they are having the same problem with this new technology that the other search engines were having back then. There is no relevancy filter on what is served up in this stream, or if there is it doesn't show. When I'm doing a search for 'Tiger Woods Mistress' I don't want to see a constant stream of Tweet's and Facebook updates of random opinions about the topic - I want news or gossip sites or stories - and if I have to read Tweets or Facebook messages about it they better be damned good and damned credible.

So I guess it's bad for SEO people - but I think it's more bad for Google. I stopped using YouTube as much when they clogged up their search results with playlists - I'll probably stop using Google as much if they clog up their search results with these - I'm sure many others will feel the same way. Unless they can make them work a lot better than they are working right now...

Twitter is the next "internet" An ecosystem all it's own.

Facebook unless it spins off a "searchable" portion of their site (running into privacy issues) they will go the way of MySpace, and need to find a niche for those 350 million users.

Facebook isn't going anywhere - EVERYBODY uses it. Old and young. It's like a giant in-depth interactive phone book. And they have already 'spun off' a searchable portion of the site - most profiles now have portions viewable by anybody (up to each user but most people opt to make at least some information public). Not to mention the iPhone-esque developers platform they built that created armies of smart people all over the world making their site better for them.

 

[izopod]

Facebook isn't going anywhere - EVERYBODY uses it. Old and young. It's like a giant in-depth interactive phone book. And they have already 'spun off' a searchable portion of the site - most profiles now have portions viewable by anybody (up to each user but most people opt to make at least some information public). Not to mention the iPhone-esque developers platform they built that created armies of smart people all over the world making their site better for them.

Facebook is dead to me as an entrepreneur. I don't like it, but I am keen to still have a presence on it. You'd be a fool not too.

As far as "searching" FB, none of the profiles have shown up in the search engines yet, that is because there is at least 10 lawsuits trying to stop them from proceeding. It's a nightmare. Do you remember they bought FriendFeed here a while back? They are still working out the "legalities" of trying to do real time search without be sued to hell and back.

My guess is Facebook will surrender Real Time search to twitter. Twitter will be the fire hose everyone uses. Now if you were a smart domainer, you'd be building a following on Twitter. That eventually is what is going to "rank" you. Spam everyone at your own peril though.

I also have a major presence on USTREAM and Justin.TV. Domainers, SEO marketers, etc will need to have a diverse connection to the "stream".

In the end, think about it. Twitter is setting up "mobile" feeds in India, and many other parts of the world where handheld devices are the primary way people connect to the internet. That's why I say don't get to cozy with your PC. Mayble your tablet, but in the end it will be "mobile, mobile, mobile"

Now if you are thinking. My 500 domain names with no direct conntection to anything social are going to make you money, then you are living in the "PPC" era. You will continue to eat those annual fees, whereas a new breed of domainer will be fully engaged in the stream.

 

[hina]

By 2011, generic twitter usernames will become defacto "internet domain names".

You will continue to eat those annual fees, whereas a new breed of domainer will be fully engaged in the stream.

Are you saying that this new breed of domainer will buy and/or sell twitter usernames? Or...?