Dubbed the Reasonable Surfer Patent by SEO Bill Slawski, this new link analysis methodology anticipates which links on a page are most likely to be clicked on by a user and assigns a relative ranking value accordingly. The more likely a link is to be clicked on by a “reasonable surfer” the larger share of available link juice it will be assigned.

In technical terms, the Google Reasonable Surfer Patent works like this:

A system generates a model based on feature data relating to different features of a link from a linking document to a linked document and user behavior data relating to navigational actions associated with the link. The system also assigns a rank to a document based on the model.

Reading the full text of the Google Reasonable Surfer Patent it quickly becomes clear that some tried and true interlinking strategies are about to go the way of the dinosaur. A once simple mathematical calculation dividing the number of links on a page by a ranking value and assigning each an equal share has become a complex equation involving the unpredictable variable of anticipated human behavior and a sliding scale of link juice flow. In short, the true value of a link on any given page will no longer be as transparent as it has been in the past. 

The Reasonable Surfer Patent eliminates the transparency of link juice flow which means changes to the way that link building and interlinking plans will be developed. Link flow SEO just became a much more strategic game. When deciding how to link within a site SEOs now need to be very aware of the impact of navigational elements and footers as well as the value of linking to pages like “About Us” throughout a site.

On pages that combine internal links with external links, SEOs will have to weigh the potential costs of lost link juice flow. If a user is more likely to click on the external link it could impact the rankings of any relevant internal links, making it a strategic play to remove the external link at the expense of providing true user value. The Reasonable Surfer Patent could end up cultivating a culture of protectionism among SEO analysts.

Because of its potential to cultivate a sense of protectionism the Reasonable Surfer Patent means that link building could become a much harder sell. SEO strategists may be weary of adding outbound links to their sites for fear that it will devalue internal links. While this fear is valid, excluding quality outbound links is not necessarily warranted.

The Google patent hints at the signals it will use to determine the behavior of a “reasonable surfer” toward a given link, and understanding these signals will give in-the-know SEOs the tools they need to benefit from the new patent.

The signals Google may use when identifying links to be clicked on by a “reasonable surfer” include:

Link position on the page – above the fold is best, the sooner you get a user’s attention the more likely they are to click through, also positioning key links in areas that users naturally ignore, like the left and right hand columns on a page, could devalue user interest ratings

Link relevance – the more relevant a link is to the content on the page the better, truly related resources are always more likely to be clicked on than unrelated or irrelevant content

Anchor text of the link – the more relevant the anchor text is to the content on a page the more likely it is to be weighted with a higher user interest value

Links in the body of the page text – links placed in the body of the page text are known to be clicked on more frequently than links or link groups that frame the content, the positioning of a link within the actual text of a page will be a strong signal

Presentation of the link – be it as an image, in a list, in a larger font size or in a different coloured text, the way in which you present your links will be a signal as to how likely a user is to click through

User ad aversion – avoid presenting links so that they may be confused for advertisements as this will likely be a negative signal, do not place links in areas that users traditionally associate with ads, like the right hand column of a page or in images that look like banners

Uniqueness of the link – redundant links on a page have long been an SEO no-no and while it may seem that increasing a link’s presence on a page would increase the likelihood of a click through, in reality it will most likely be perceived in the new schema as link stuffing

Navigational interlinking – including navigational or footer links on every page may no longer be an SEO must-do as they lead to link distraction and link juice flow dilution, even the coveted (and very useful) breadcrumb trail may be a negative signal for these reasons

As always there is a lot going on at Google.  Late Spring/early Summer seems to be a busy time for Googlers.  Here are a couple of great articles that are Google related that you might want to consider sharing with your online marketing or SEO teams.

1. Google SEO experts explain what REALLY affects search results – http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-answers-seo-questions/13731/ five Google experts shared their thoughts on SEO from things such as duplicate content to XML sitemaps.  It is a good reminder for many in the industry with some nice nuggets thrown in.�
   

   For example, with regards to HTML sitemaps, Matt Cutts suggests: If you have time or a script that can generate a pretty HTML Sitemap (e.g; for a blog, you could have one page for each year or month of your blog, depending on how much you write), that can work nicely.

   As mentioned there are some pretty great reminders here.

2. Google’s encrypted search casts shadow on web analytics – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/25/google_ssl_search_and_web_analytics/.  An interesting articles on the impact of how “SSL snuffs browser referrals”.  Here’s a brief snippet from the article: “Web browsers typically turn off referrers when going from HTTPS to HTTP mode to provide extra privacy,” Google says. “By clicking on a search result that takes you to an HTTP site, you could disable any customizations that the website provides based on the referrer information.”
3.  The Value of Google Result Positioning – there have been a number of articles out recently based on click-thru percentages from the organic results of Google search results.  Chitka Research shares their information.  Some interesting stuff here.  What does top spot in the organic rankings mean?  According to Chitka, 34.35% which is considerably higher than what others including our own research have stated.  (Our research suggests that the top spot typically returns a CTR of around 26%. In addition, one of the stats mentioned based on the Chitka research was that going from the 11th spot to 10th (from the second page top the first page) sees a 143% jump in traffic.   The numbers are based on a sample of 8,253,240 impressions across the Chitika advertising network in May, 2010.
   http://chitika.com/research/2010/the-value-of-google-result-positioning/
   
   
4. Something Is Up (Or Down) With Google’s Search Algorithm - SE Roundtable has shared their thoughts on the Google “MayDay” Update which we had previously touched on a few weeks back.  Is it this possible algorithm update that is taking place at Google or are people experiencing traffic fluctuations due to Google’s redesign?  http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022264.html
   
5. Google’s Push To Speed Up Your Web Site – As Eric Enge points out on his SE Land piece, Google continues to make a big push for improving your website download performance.  Arte you one that thinks that page speed is not an issue?  Well Eric provides an example of a site that did in fact experience a drop in rankings and traffic as a result of slower page load times:

We recently became involved with one website that had seen a drop in rankings and traffic right around the time that Google announced that speed was a ranking factor back on April 9th. Our investigation found that they had been having significant server outages as well as a fairly long average page load time (greater than 5 seconds). While it is not possible to be definitively sure that page speed is the reason for the drop, our investigation has led us to believe that this is in fact the case. We have, of course, addressed the issues and hope to see traffic pop up again soon.

There you have it a couple of great articles about Google.  Google is up to a lot of things these days, from potential algorithm updates to SERP redesigns to encrypted search.  It can be a full time job keeping on top of all of these initiatives, but the main thing is to be patient and see how this will impact you site.  Do not be too quick to make changes for the sake of making changes, but be aware the Google is continuing to evolve its search offering.

Thanks to Tina Kells for pointing us in the direction of a couple of the articles mentioned above.

So what goes on at Google?  What’s in the secret sauce?  What are they going to come up with next?  How will they change Search from what we know it to be today?  Well the fact is, your guess is as good as mine, but we do know that Google continues to refine and tweak their business as they follow their mantra to “do no evil”.

Earlier this week, Google’s Matt Cutts, released a brief video discussing the fact that Google likely makes a change per day to the search algorithm. They don’t necessarily release those changes each day, but they will release them in batches.  Every day, can you image?  This is probably why they continue to be North America’s most popular search engine well popular based on market share.  The point is Google is always up to something.  They do not settle for complancency, in fact Google promotes change, creativity and innovation.  If you think about it, this is how they have become one of the world’s most recognized and popular brands.

So let’s take a look at some of the cool things about Google that have come out in the past week or so.

20 Things That Google is Up To

1. Google hired goats to cut the lawn - according to Google, more than 200 goats from California Grazing have once again arrived at Google’s Mountain View headquarters where they’ll stay for over a week chomping away on grassy goodness. 
2. Google Webmaster Tools Now Showing Clickthrough Data - big news for search marketers as this data provides some great insight into what people actually click on from a natural search perspective.  Google previously just reported the average position at which your site’s pages appeared in the search results for a particular query. Now you can click on a given search query in the Top search queries report to see a breakdown of the number of impressions and the amount of clickthrough for each position that your site’s pages appeared at in the search results associated with that query. Impressions are the number of times that your site’s pages appeared in the search results for the query. Clickthrough is the number of times searchers clicked on that query’s search results to visit a page from your site.
3. Google Holds an Atmosphere Conference to talk cloud computing - Atmosphere 2010 featured a range of luminaries and thought leaders – including senior Google executives, technology innovators, and industry analysts – providing input on the cloud and the issues shaping IT today. http://www.google.com/events/atmosphere2010/
4. Google announced the Google Product Reviews Program – at the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit, Google Product Director Sameer Samat announced the Google Product Reviews Program. Through the program, we will begin featuring full-length product reviews and user ratings from participating retailers and manufacturers wherever it will help users with their shopping, including in our search results and advertising programs.  Sound interesting?  Read more here: http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/products/reviews.html
5. Forbes communicated that the Google Guys are amongst the greenest billionaires on the planet.  In fact, through Google’s charitable foundation, Google.org, the billionaire duo of Larry Page and Sergey Brin has committed $100 million in grants to nonprofits and investments in companies ranging from solar energy to development of plug-in electric vehicle technologies.
6. Google to Impose on Salesforce? – according to reports from businessinsider.com, Google may be looking to impose on Salesforce territory.  “Within roughly 3 1/2 years, Google Apps has amassed 25 million users and more than 2 million businesses. In contrast, it took Salesforce.com 10 years to reach 2 million users and 72,000 businesses.”  Google’s Marketplace announcement a few weeks back
7. Matt Cutts from Google recently posted his presentation from SMX West where he discussed, Google’s SEO audit that it did on itself.
8. Google launched a new feature in real-time search that gives you the ability to search and replay the public archive of tweets on Twitter. While real-time search usually focuses on what’s happening now, our new feature is helpful for viewing the history of what happened in the past and how people reacted to a particular topic on Twitter.
9. Google Adds Buzz, Localized Suggest To Maps - Google Buzz has been available on Maps for mobile devices, but now Google has made it possible to access Buzz on Maps for the PC. In addition Google is rolling out localized Search Suggest for Maps in more places around the world.
10. Bloomberg News is reporting that Google is in discussions on what could be a $1 billion buyout of ITA Software, a company that provides reservation/information systems used by many well-known travel industry companies.  “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information, and ITA does that for travel,” said Henry Harteveldt, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in San Francisco.
11. Google has decided to change the name of what was called the “Google Local Business Center” to “Google Places.” The rationale, according to the press release, is to better connect Google Place Pages with the place where local business information is claimed, entered and enhanced because millions of people use Google to find local businesses each and every day. http://sites.google.com/a/pressatgoogle.com/googleplaces/press-release
12. Google responded to reports suggesting that a consumer advocacy group thinks the government should break up Google.
13. Google Buys Stealth Hardware Startup Agnilux - in yet another acquistion.
14. Google shared information on the crawling of XML sitemaps in that “Google’s Sitemaps crawler usually reacts to the update frequency of your Sitemap files.” Note that if you find that Google is crawling your sites too frequently, you can also set the crawl rate in Webmaster Tools for those sites.
15. Google’s Virtual Keyboard Now In Search Bar- this is something cool as Google is deploying their virtual keyboards on the search results pages for their non-English based search portals.
16. Google has begun leveraging recently acquired social search startup Aardvark, using it for Help Support. The service allows you to ask questions and get responses almost immediately from other users who are knowledgeable about the topic at hand.
17. Google announced updates that will help you read and write foreign scripts with Google Transliteration and Script Converter.  – http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/helping-you-read-and-write-foreign.html
18. Google launched a new Government Requests tool to give people information about the requests for user data or content removal we receive from government agencies around the world. They are using data from July-December, 2009, and plan to update the data in 6-month increments.
19. Google unveiled Rich Snippets for recipes – Rich Snippets are the brief annotations you see beneath search results that summarize what’s on a webpage. In addition to Rich Snippets for reviews, people, video and events, this week Google unveiled a new Rich Snippets format for recipes.
20. Google sheds some light on using a trailing slash or not….

We could go on an on, but you get the point.  Google is busy and continues to make improvements in all facets of their service and product offering.  So what did your organization accomplish in the past week?

Google and its proponents have always made a point of emphasizing the user experience of search – that’s why the Google start page isn’t covered in widgets and ads, and they’ve even gone farther recently with making everything except the search box itself not appear until the searcher does something else on the page.

I won’t speculate on whether Google advertising during the Super Bowl is an indication of changing markets, fear of Bing, or simply a bid at making the 2011 “Best Super Bowl Ads Ever Aired In All Of History” list, but I will say that the continuing focus on the experience of the people using Google is likely one of the reasons they’re so popular.

Watch all of the Google “Search Stories”

I had the chance to chat with Stefan Weitz recently about where Microsoft wanted to take Bing and it’s hard not to get swept up in Stefan’s evangelism. Microsoft is trying to do some very impressive things with search: parse the ambiguity out of our language, stitch together disparate fragments of content into a whole that’s useful to the user and present all this in a results format that informs and assists without requiring extensive tweaking on the part of the user.

We all love to hate the evil empire, but let’s be fair – Microsoft has humbled themselves dramatically and they’re sincerely trying to do a good job with Bing. The team at Redmond is getting used to their unexpected position as the underdog and, based on my conversation with Stefan, they’re beginning to relish the challenge that comes from playing David to Google’s Goliath.

My quibble, however, and it’s not an insignificant one, is that Bing needs to step up their differentiation. Stefan said in the interview that Bing first wanted to at least match Google at their own game, that being algorithmic search. I understand the logic, but there are some other things to consider here.

To Break a Habit You have to Break the Pattern

For Bing to gain market share against Google they have to break a habit. And to break a habit, you have to force someone out of his or her rut. There are two ways to do that. One, you change the route they have to take so they have to consciously steer back into the rut. Secondly, you give them an alternative that’s so much better than the rut, they’re willing to do the heavy mental lifting required to consciously shut down their “autopilot” driven rut seeking routines when they start to play out. Make no mistake; habits are notoriously tough things to break. Our brain has a box-load of nasty little tricks it will employ to keep habits in place, because habits require less work from the brain than actually thinking our way through things. Our brains are inherently lazy (or, if you prefer, efficient). There’s no such thing as breaking a habit a “little bit” or breaking a habit “now and then.” You either break a habit or you don’t.

So, what does this mean for Bing? The Bing philosophy, right now, is that for the vast majority of searches they deliver what is basically a Bing-ized version of Google. And then, for some select searches, they deliver a more differentiated search result. For example, search for “Bristol England” on Bing and Google. On Bing, you’ll get what’s called a Task Page, tailored to be more useful for those trying to accomplish things related to Bristol: the current weather, favorite attractions and the official tourism site. This is Bing’s flavor of a decision-based guide. This, theoretically, is what makes Bing a “decision engine” rather than a “search engine”.

But now go to the Google results page. They may be hidden in a more traditional presentation of results, but most of the same information is there. I’d give Bing the edge from a usefulness perspective, but it’s not a knock out. It’s more of a 12 round split decision.

Lets try another example: the much-cited Farecast search. True, the latest airfares from Farecast are useful, but real interactivity is still one click away at Bing Travel. Bing is dipping a rather tentative toe in the waters of usefulness. Right now, Google isn’t matching the Farecast functionality, but even with its standard search results, the perceivable difference to the user is not all that great. I feel Bing is still trying to match Google rather than draw away from it. And to break a habit, you have to put a lot of distance between yourself and the habitual choice. You don’t abandon one rut for a similar rut headed to the same basic destination. What’s the point of that?

Search One-Up-Manship

There is some good news in all this. From the user perspective, I’ve seen more useful features unveiled on both Google and Bing then I’ve seen in a long long time. As Bing starts to experiment with more useful features, Google has been consistently matching them. And this brings up another fatal flaw in Bing’s strategy. It’s pretty easy for Google to keep a watchful eye on Bing for useful innovations. As long as those innovations are incremental in nature, Google can quickly match them. Bing will never build up the degree of differentiation needed to break a habit. But the by-product is pretty compelling for the user, no matter whether you’re using Google or Bing – a pace of innovation that’s picked up dramatically.

In the Bing-Google battle, the user seems to be the big winner so far.

Originally published in Mediapost’s Search Insider January 28th 2010

Yesterday, Google also rolled out something that they first mentioned back in Octrober and that is Google Social Search.  The reasoning behind this?  Well Google understands that people on the web today make social connections and publish web content in many different ways, such as with blogs, status updates and tweets. This has translated into a “public social web of content” that has special relevance to each person. Unfortunately, that information isn’t always very easy to find in one simple place.  This is where Google Social Search comes in.

Google Social Search:  What is It?

According to Google, Google Social Search helps you find more relevant public content from your broader social circle.  Social Search takes personalized search results to a new level.  Basically Google finds relevant “public” content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results.  Google has illustrated an example here.  Google states that “All the information that appears as part of Google Social Search is published publicly on the web – you can find it without Social Search if you really want to.”  So what Google is saying as they have done the legwork for you and compiled this data to make it easier for you to find.  The goal is to make your results more relevant.  This really is another level of personalization.

So how does Google do this?  Well Google builds  social profile or social circle based on things such as who you are following on Twitter or on FriendFeed.  In addition, Google uses information they collect from Gmail to include your chat buddies and contacts in your friends, family and coworkers froups.  Of course for Google Social Search to work, you need to be signed into your personal Google account.  Google Social Search also factors in websites that you may be subscribing to via GoogleReader if you in fact use this service as a feed reader.

What kind of content will you see with Google Social Search?

Expect to see information that can be accessed via your interaction with Google services as well as social network information from places such as Twitter.  As Google mentions the types of content that you can expect to see includes:

• Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends’ Google profiles
• Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from social services that your friends have listed in their Google profiles
• Images posted publicly from your social circle on Picasa Web and from websites linked from their Google profiles
• Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions

Overall, I’m not sure how successful this will be for Google.  I mean this is only beneficial to users who have a personal Google account.  I’m not sure if everyone is ok with the fact that Google is reminding users about how much data they have collected about them based on theironline social experiences.  You can see a list of your social circle connections at google.com/s2/search/social.  Will this contribute to information overload for users, or will it in fact do just the opposite?  Regardless Google is getting social and is working to help you manage your online social activity.

More on Google Social Search

Keep Your Eye on Intent

A couple of columns ago I indicated that consumer intent was one of the most important things to watch in the shift of advertising. Intention changes the rules of engagement with advertising. It switches our perception of ads from that of an interruption we’re trying to avoid to that of valuable information we’re looking for. With intention in place, the success of an ad depends not on its ability to hijack our attention but rather on it’s ability to deliver on our intention. Ads no longer have to intrude on our consciousness; all they have to do is inform us.

To this point, some 15 years into the practice of search marketing, the majority of our efforts have been restricted to effectively meeting the intentions of our prospects. And, to be honest, we still have a long way to go to get that right. Landing page experiences still fall far short of visitor expectations. Search ad copy is still irrelevant in a large percentage of cases. Even when the keywords used give a clear signal of intent (unfortunately, a fairly rare circumstance) most marketers come up short on delivering an experience that’s relevant and helpful. Poor search marketing is the reason quality scores exist.

The Keynote Avinash Never Gave

But there’s an immense store of untapped potential lying in this “Database of Intentions.” When Avinash Kaushik did the keynote at last month’s Search Insider Summit, he intended to touch on 3 topics. Unfortunately, the third topic had to be dropped because of time limitations. He talked about attribution models and the Long Tail. The third topic was to be the use of search as a source of intelligence. Kaushik was going to explore how to leverage the “Database of Intentions” to better inform all our marketing efforts.

When it comes to tapping into this extraordinarily rich source of intelligence, even Search Marketers are slow to realize the potential. And we’re the ones that supposedly “get” the importance of search. For more traditional marketers, most are completely unaware that such a thing even exists. I believe two things are holding us back from effectively mining the “Database of Intentions” – the isolation of search marketing within an organization and a lack of tools to effectively mine the intelligence.

SEM is an Island

Search marketing lives as an isolated island within most organizations. It lives apart from the main marketing department and it certainly lives apart from the day to day pulse of the corporation. The bigger the company, the more true this is. That means that the one department that has a hope in hell of understanding the importance of all these collected searches has little or no voice in the overall marketing strategy. All those signals of customer intent, indeed, the best barometer of consumer sentiment ever built, lies locked away behind the imaginary door of the search marketing cubicle. The traditional marketing folks have no idea that this crystal ball offering a real time view of the goals, thoughts and aspirations of their target market even exists, let alone how to use it.

Wanted: Better Mining Tools

Even the relatively minimal efforts Google has made to provide tools to dig into this data have proven to be amazingly valuable for marketers. Google Trends and its bigger brother, Google Insights, provide a glimpse into the power of Google’s query database. Unfortunately, these tools provide a rather anemic interface considering the wealth of information that could be gleaned. Privacy is one stumbling block, but surely we could have more powerful tools to examine and slice the data, even in anonymized, aggregated form. I would love to hitch the sophistication of a comScore type application to Google’s back end data.

Battelle said this about the Database of Intentions:

Such a beast has never before existed in the history of culture, but is almost guaranteed to grow exponentially from this day forward. This artifact can tell us extraordinary things about who we are and what we want as a culture.

Isn’t about time that we marketers clued into it?

Originally published in Mediapost’s Search Insider January 7th 2010

Of Nouns and Verbs

Most brands, when they get incorporated into our language, become nouns. Kleenex, aspirin, escalators, thermoses and zippers all went down similar paths on the road to becoming common terms that described things. It might interest you to know, for instance, that in Japan, staplers are known as Hotchkisses (or technically, hochikisu). Google, however, is different. The word Google doesn’t replace the noun “search engine,” it replaced the act of searching. We made googling a verb. And that is a vital difference. We don’t call all search engines Google. But we do refer to our act of searching as googling.

More than this, we made Google a transitive verb – “I googled it”. That means I (the subject) used Google (the verb) to do something with it (the object). Pinker says the way we use words betrays the way we think about the world. Verbs are the lynchpins of our vocabulary, because we use them to explain how we interact with our physical world. And transitive verbs, in particular, act as connectors between us and the world. I once said that search was the connector between intent and content. The enshrining of Google as a verb reflects this. The act of googling connects us with information.

Sampling the Outside World through Google

But the use of Google as a transitive verb also gives us a glimpse into how we regard the gathering of the content we Google. Transitive verbs tend to reflect a transfer from the outside to the inside, a consumption of the external, either physically or through our senses: I drank it, I ate it, I saw it, I heard it, I felt it. In that sense, their use is personal and fundamental. “I googled it” gives us a sense of metaphorical transference – the consumption of information.

So, what does this mean? If you look at the role of our language, there is something of fundamental importance happening here. Language is our collection of commonly accepted labels that allow us to transfer concepts from our heads into the heads of others. These labels are not useful unless they mean the same thing to everyone. When I say thermos, you know instantly what I mean. Your visualization of it might be slightly different than mine (a Batman thermos from grade 5 is the image that I currently have) but we can be confident that we’re thinking about the same category of item. We have a shared understanding.

Speaking a Common Language

This need for commonality is the threshold that new words must cross before they become part of common language. This means that critical mass becomes important. Enough of us have to have the same concept in our heads when we use the same label before that label becomes useful. Generally, when technology introduces a concept that we have to find a new label for, we try a few variations on for size before we settle on one that fits. Common usage is the deciding vote.

With things like new products, the dominant brand has a good chance of becoming the commonly used label. Enough of us have experience with the brand to make it a suitable stand in for the product category. We all know what’s meant by the word escalator. And new product categories creep up fairly regularly, forcing us to agree on a common label. In the last decade or two, we’ve had to jam a lot of new nouns in our vocabulary: ATM’s, fax, browser, Smartphones, GPS, etc. Few of these categories have had enough single brand domination to make that brand the common label. Apple has probably come the closest, with iPod often substituting for MP3 player.

The material nature of our world means that we’re forever adding new nouns to our vocabulary. There are always new things we have to find words for. That’s why one half of all the entries in the Oxford dictionary are nouns. The odds of a brand name becoming a noun are much greater, simply because the frequency is higher. And by their nature, nouns live apart from us. They are objects. We are the subjects.

The Rarity of a Verb

But verbs are different. Only one seventh of dictionary entries are verbs. Verbs live closer to us. And the introduction of a new verb into our vocabulary is a much rarer event. This makes the critical mass threshold for a verb more difficult to pass than for a noun. First of all, enough of us have to do the action to create the need for a common label. Secondly, it’s rare for one brand to dominate that action so thoroughly. The birth of googling as a verb is noteworthy simply because so many of us were doing something new at the same place.

Why did I share this linguistic lesson with you? Again, it’s because so many of us are doing something at the same place. New verbs emerge because we are doing new things. We do new things because something drives us to do them. That makes it a fundamental human need. And to have that fundamental human need effectively captured by one brand – to the point that we call the act by the brand’s name – offers a rare opportunity to catalogue human activity in one place. One of the most underappreciated aspects of search marketing is the power of search logs to provide insight into human behavior. That’s what my first column of 2010 will be about.

And, just to leave you with a tidbit for next week, currently another brand name is on the cusp of becoming a verb (although it’s exact proper form is still being debated). The jury is still being assembled, but Twitter could be following in Google’s footsteps.

Originally published in Mediapost’s Search Insider Dec 31st 2009

The latest results scroll along with live updates as new information comes in and you can scroll backwards in time to see older stories and posts. The point is to provide the freshest material out there – before it hits the newsstands or Google’s news results. But not just anything will show up in the instant results. Google has said they need to see a spike in the information being generated about a certain keyword before instant results are generated – the feature will not be displayed for all searches until a specific threshold is reached. Instant results are also available for mobile searchers.

While this is no doubt going to be a useful feature for breaking news, only time will tell how relevant the results generated are and more importantly, if they actually provide quality information that is useful to searchers. You can expect to see Google tweaking the instant results algorithm as they figure out what works and what doesn’t. This change will reward companies who understand social media and who have been harnessing channels like Twitter effectively, allowing them to gain space on the Google search results page which has traditionally been dominated by larger companies with more authoritative websites. As for SEO efforts, this continues to underscore the need for companies to harness multiple marketing channels and view marketing efforts and customer touch points holistically rather than isolated from each other.

While real time search will be unrolled over the next few days and may not be immediately available for all users, you can see it in action now at Google Trends (which has moved out of Google Labs) and clicking on any of the trending topics.