Legal Search Marketing

Archive for the ‘Google Search Engine’ Category

Recently Google published an official statement about quality links and their effect on your website rankings. In the statement, Google wants to explain their viewpoint on earning quality links.

FROM GOOGLE:

A popular question on our Webmaster Help Forum is in regard to best practices for organic link building. There seems to be some confusion, especially among less experienced webmasters, on how to approach the topic. Different perspectives have been shared, and we would also like to explain our viewpoint on earning quality links.

If your site is rather new and still unknown, a good way marketing technique is to get involved in the community around your topic. Interact and contribute on forums and blogs. Just keep in mind to contribute in a positive way, rather than spamming or soliciting for your site. Just building a reputation can drive people to your site. And they will keep on visiting it and linking to it. If you offer long-lasting, unique and compelling content — something that lets your expertise shine — people will want to recommend it to others. Great content can serve this purpose as much as providing useful tools.

*** Here Google is saying its a good idea to visit other blogs and forums and contribute to them by leaving comments and also a link to your site.  They are also saying that if you have good quality content, that people will visit your site and LINK to it. So as always, the key is CONTENT. ***

A promising way to create value for your target group and earn great links is to think of issues or problems your users might encounter. Visitors are likely to appreciate your site and link to it if you publish a short tutorial or a video providing a solution, or a practical tool. Survey or original research results can serve the same purpose, if they turn out to be useful for the target audience. Both methods grow your credibility in the community and increase visibility. This can help you gain lasting, merit-based links and loyal followers who generate direct traffic and “spread the word.” Offering a number of solutions for different problems could evolve into a blog which can continuously affect the site’s reputation in a positive way.
** Giving away quality information  for free is a good way to get people to link to your site and to establish yourself as an expert in your practice area.  Creating videos is a good way to engage  your audience. **

Humor can be another way to gain both great links and get people to talk about your site. With Google Buzz and other social media services constantly growing, entertaining content is being shared now more than ever. We’ve seen all kinds of amusing content, from ASCII art embedded in a site’s source code to funny downtime messages used as a viral marketing technique to increase the visibility of a site. However, we do not recommend counting only on short-lived link-bait tactics. Their appeal wears off quickly and as powerful as marketing stunts can be, you shouldn’t rely on them as a long-term strategy or as your only marketing effort.

It’s important to clarify that any legitimate link building strategy is a long-term effort. There are those who advocate for short-lived, often spammy methods, but these are not advisable if you care for your site’s reputation. Buying PageRank-passing links or randomly exchanging links are the worst ways of attempting to gather links and they’re likely to have no positive impact on your site’s performance over time. If your site’s visibility in the Google index is important to you it’s best to avoid them.

** This is important. Google is saying you should not buy links or do random link exchanges and saying it won’t have much positive effect in the long run.  Any legitimate link building strategy is a long-term effort.  There are many ways to generate links to your site but creating quality content and videos for your site and blog are among the best ways to generate links in the long run.

Directory entries are often mentioned as another way to promote young sites in the Google index. There are great, topical directories that add value to the Internet. But there are not many of them in proportion to those of lower quality. If you decide to submit your site to a directory, make sure it’s on topic, moderated, and well structured. Mass submissions, which are sometimes offered as a quick work-around SEO method, are mostly useless and not likely to serve your purposes.

** They are addressing the issue of getting links from directories and are basically saying that yes there are some directories that make sense and would offer a high  quality link to your site BUT that there’s mostly a lot of junk directories that don’t really do much for your site.  So for a legal site, it doesn’t make sense to have your site listed in 100’s of different general business directories or non legal directories.  Usually you want to have your site listed in Yahoo, Open Directory (Dmoz.org), Best of the Web Directory and a few others, as well as any legal directories that match your firms practice and location.  If your a dui lawyer, then it makes sense to get listed in a DUI Lawyer directory.  Yet you want to get listed in a DUI legal directory that has been around awhile and its also important that the link you get from that directory is a FOLLOW link and not a NO FOLLOW link, otherwise it wont count.  **

It can be a good idea to take a look at similar sites in other markets and identify the elements of those sites that might work well for yours, too. However, it’s important not to just copy success stories but to adapt them, so that they provide unique value for your visitors.

All of this is important because the bottom line is that the more quality links you get, the better your search engine rankings will be.  Creating high quality content on  a regular basis will help and is very important, yet there are many different things you must do and it all takes time. Yet getting top SEO rankings can be a great source of new clients, so its all worth it!

Google understands the potential risks of browsing the web on an unsecured network, particularly when information is sent over the wire unencrypted — as it is for most major websites today. That’s why we offered SSL support for Gmail back when we launched the product in 2004. Most other webmail providers don’t provide this feature even today. We’ve since added SSL support for Calendar, Docs, Sites, and several other products. Additionally, early this year we made SSL the default setting for all Gmail users.

As we work to provide more support for SSL across our products, today we’re introducing the ability to search with Google over SSL. We still have some testing to do, but you can try out the new encrypted version of Google search at https://www.google.com and read more about it on the Official Google Blog.

Today, the Federal Trade Commission cleared Google’s acquisition of AdMob, a mobile advertising start up.

We’re excited to work with Omar Hamoui and his talented team at AdMob to develop new mobile advertising solutions for marketers, mobile app developers and mobile publishers.

The decision is great news for the mobile advertising ecosystem as a whole. This was reflected in the widespread industry support for our acquisition.

Throughout the FTC’s review process, it’s been clear that mobile advertising is growing rapidly.

As mobile phone usage increases, growth in mobile advertising is only going to accelerate. This benefits mobile developers and publishers who will get better advertising solutions, marketers who will find new ways to reach consumers, and users who will get better ads and more free content.

We’re very excited about the possibilities in this field. As an immediate matter, we’re now moving to close this acquisition in coming weeks. We’ll then start work right away on bringing AdMob’s and Google’s teams and products together. This industry is moving fast, and we’re excited to be part of the race!

Mobile advertising is going to be HUGE and its a good idea to start looking into creating a mobile version of your law firm site and also into advertising via mobile device. Who doesnt have a web enabled phone these days, everyone!

It’s Pac Man’s 30th Anniversary and Google is celebrating by putting a free version of the  console classic on their homepage.

Instead of search, hit the “Insert Coin” button and drive everyone in the office nuts, with the clanging bells of 1980’s synth yore.

Pac Man was originally built by Japanese firm Namco and spawned the unauthorized spin off, Ms. Pac Man, a licensed television show and countless items of branded paraphernalia.

Pac Man was the start of everything and I was 12 when it came out and I still like it! Im glad Google honored it.

Google has updated the search engine and they now have the search tools on the left side, making it easier to refine your search. You can do a search and then switch to the News or Image category.  Then you can also refine your search to see results for different time periods, like you can only see results for the past 24 hours.  Take a look at the video below for more info.

FROM GOOGLE BLOG

Using Google today, you may have noticed that something feels slightly different — the look and feel of our search results have changed! Today’s metamorphosis responds to the increasing richness of the web and the increasing power of search — revealing search tools on the left and updating the visual look and feel throughout. While we are constantly rolling out small changes and updates, today’s changes showcase the latest evolutions in our search technology, making it easier than ever to find exactly what you’re looking for.

What’s new and what’s changed?
We’ve added contextually relevant, left-hand navigation to the page. This new side panel highlights the most relevant search tools and refinements for your query. Over the past three years, we’ve launched Universal Search, the Search Options panel and Google Squared, and it’s those three technologies that power the left-hand panel.

Universal Search helps you find the most relevant types of results for your search. The top section of the new left-hand panel builds on Universal Search by suggesting the most relevant genres of results for your query and letting you seamlessly switch to these different types of results. The “Everything” option remains our essential search experience with different types of results integrated into the main results, but now you can also easily switch to just the particular type of results you are looking for.

Our expandable Search Options panel launched last spring brought many rich slice-and-dice tools to search. The new left-hand navigation showcases these tools and enables you to get a different view of your results. Perhaps you’d like to see images from each of the results or just the newest information? These options are all on the left, and our technology will suggest the tools that are most relevant and helpful to your query.

Google Squared (available on Google Labs) helps you find and compare entities. Our “Something different” feature builds on the technology in Google Squared to find other entities that are related to your query, so you can easily explore not only the results for your current query but other related topics.

In addition to the left-hand side changes, we’ve updated our look and feel in terms of our color palette and our logo. These changes are slight, keeping our page minimalist and whimsical, but make our overall look more modern.

The new design refreshes and streamlines the look, feel and functionality of Google, making it easier to pinpoint what you’re looking for. It’s powerful, yet simple. Today’s changes are the latest in our continuing efforts to evolve and improve Google. We’ve been testing these changes with users over the past few months, and what we’re launching today reflects the feedback we’ve received.. We want to ensure that the Google you use today is better than the one you used yesterday, and these latest changes open up many possibilities for future features and enhancements.

VIDEO FROM GOOGLE:

Google’s Matt Cutts just posted a video on YouTube answering the question, “how many search algorithm changes were made in 2009?” In response to that question, Matt said 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. But overall, he hopes to average at least one change per day to the algorithm. He said in 2009, they probably had between 350 to 400 or so changed to the search algorithm.

I’m sure many of these are minor tweaks but it shows that the Google search algorithm is ever changing.

Google launched a new social effort today called Google Buzz.
If you're immediate reaction is, "Wait, doesn't Yahoo! already have a
product named Buzz?" Then you'd be correct. But Google didn't acquire Yahoo! Buzz. Nor has Yahoo! Buzz gone defunct and Google felt ok about picking it up as a name.

The two products are alike in name and the fact that they're social. But that's about it.

Google Buzz lets you be social from Gmail. You can update your
status there and share photos. (Yahoo! Buzz is more akin to social
bookmarking and trending topics.)

Who do you share Google Buzz with? Gmail contacts, for one, but you
can also send your updates to Twitter as well. Your Gmail contacts can
respond to your updates, using the @ symbol much like Twitter and now
Facebook use. Your Gmail inbox will be used to push notifications to
Buzz users.

Buzz is rolling out, so it may take a few days before you get access. In the meantime, check out this vid to see how it works:

Google posted a very strong Q4, given the recession, with $6.67
billion in revenues. This beats financial analyst general consensus
estimates. Here are some top-level highlights from the earnings release:

Revenues – Google reported revenues of
$6.67 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, representing a 17%
increase over fourth quarter 2008 revenues of $5.70 billion.

Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites
generated revenues of $4.42 billion, or 66% of total revenues, in the
fourth quarter of 2009. This represents a 16% increase over fourth
quarter 2008 revenues of $3.81 billion.

Google Network Revenues – Google’s
partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.04
billion, or 31% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2009. This
represents a 21% increase from fourth quarter 2008 network revenues of
$1.69 billion.

International Revenues – Revenues from outside of
the United States totaled $3.52 billion, representing 53% of total
revenues in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to 53% in the third
quarter of 2009 and 50% in the fourth quarter of 2008 . . .

• Revenues from the United Kingdom totaled $772 million, representing
  12% of revenues in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to 12% in the
  fourth quarter of 2008.

Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include
clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our
AdSense partners, increased approximately 13% over the fourth quarter
of 2008 and increased approximately 9% over the third quarter of 2009.

Big surprise Google kicks ass per usual!

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Many in the West reacted negatively when Google kowtowed to the
Chinese government's demands to censor its Chinese search engine Google.cn. At the time Google said that it would monitor conditions in the country and make adjustments in policy as necessary.

Looks like that time has come.

Agents who may have been working on behalf of the the Chinese
government have apparently attempted a coordinated hacking attack
against Google and over a dozen other major corporations. In Google's
case it seems like the purpose was to access email accounts of
suspected anti-government activists.

In light of this situation Google has chosen to stop self-censoring
its search engine results, and may very well have to shut down it's
China operations.

Read the official Google press release here.