The Official Google Blog for May 16 entitled “Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings” was written by Amit Singhal, SVP of Engineering for Google. Google is making an effort to take search to an even higher level, making it easier for people to find the most relevant information possible on the web. The Knowledge Graph divides search into three entities: Better Summaries; Correct Search Result; Deeper Meanings.

First, the Knowledge Graph will take your search term and generate a relevant summary in a separate box to the right of the search result listings you are accustomed to seeing. The summary will provide you with immediate information about the search that Google has determined to be most relevant. This information is not randomly chosen; Google has complied statistics based on searches Google users have done in the past on that search term to decipher the most common facts users have researched over the years on that term.

Since one search term can possess several different meanings a SERP could easily return many listings that all pertain to different meanings for the same search term. The Knowledge Graph consolidates the listings and provides the user with a separate “See Results About” box that allows the user to click on the meaning he or she wants to research.

Keeping in line with the first characteristic Deeper Meanings are generated based on past queries from users as well. The Knowledge Graph can help a user take the next step in a search by giving you more information to research than simply the bare minimum of what you wanted. The idea is to help a user answer his or her next question before it is even asked by making that answer immediately available as part of the original search using the Knowledge Graph.

The Knowledge Graph will be rolled out on a gradual basis to U.S. Google users and will even be available on smart phones and tablets. Be sure to read the May 16 Official Google Blog post and watch the video on that page for more detail about the Knowledge Graph!

This is a bit trickier from a business perspective since as a brand owner you want to publicize your site and advertise your content as much as possible while maintaining some restraint in the process. A branded social media profile that is too heavy on corporate posts could easily start being ignored by its Followers and Fans if the owner of that profile is not careful.  Constant advertising gets old and could be seen by people online as a lack of personal care on the part of the brand.

Make an effort to create posts that keep the interest level of your audience high without being a direct call to action. For example, a business page for a record store could post videos and songs of popular artists or of new albums that have arrived in the store for purchase. Users that have an opportunity to preview the music first may be more likely to make the purchase, especially if any call to action is minimal rather than overly pushy. Another method may be posting humorous stories or cartoons related to the service you offer, a fun way to keep your audience focused on your objective without being obtrusive in the process.

Remember that social media for you and your audience should be fun. Find the right balance between advertising and creating fun content in order to keep you and audience happy and interested.

The Penguin update appears to have launched April 24, so first you need to examine your web traffic to see if there was a drop that correlates with the launch of Penguin. Try using the Open Site Explorer or Majestic SEO Site Explorer to determine the backlinks that may be affecting your website. Majestic has a great additional feature called ACRank that you can use to determine the value of the link. Regardless of which tool you use this is going to be a time-consuming process since you need to visit the sites in question and investigate each site’s quality.

Once you have verified the links that are causing problems for your website you need to commence the process of having them removed as backlinks to your site. Do not expect this to be an easy process. Create a template email that explains your position as a website owner, the URLs where bad links have been discovered, the URL on your site that those links direct to and anchor text. The more information you can provide the better chance you have of the links being removed. Send emails to the site owners you need to communicate with and wait for a response. Some site owners will remove the bad link and notify you, remove the link without telling you, remove the link only if you pay for the removal or not respond in any way. Keep detailed notes of all communication with these different webmasters and do not hesitate to contact Google if a site owner tries to force payment out of you for removal of a backlink.

Be diligent, be cognizant of how your site is being affected but most of all, be patient! Penguin is another Google algorithm that will continue to be updated, so if you continue to monitor your website and work at keeping it relevant you should be able to adjust to Penguin the same way you adjusted to Panda in 2011. Good luck!

Scott Thompson appeared to be an individual that was inspired and aggressively  taking action in an effort to return Yahoo to its glory days before the Google era took over the online landscape. Unfortunately that momentum was dramatically halted recenty and caused a major shake-up in the Yahoo corporate ladder.

Sunday, May 13, 2012, Yahoo officially announced that effective immediately Ross Levinsohn has replaced Scott Thompson as interim Chief Executive Officer. This is a stunning announcement, particularly since the company has shown improvement. Therefore, there has to be a very important reason why Thompson would have stepped down from his position as CEO just four months after taking over.

Yahoo cited “personal reasons” for the departure. However, just over a week ago a company by the name of Third Point, a Yahoo investor, reported that Scott Thompson had “embellished his academic credentials.” Apparently the resume that Thompson originally submitted to Yahoo claimed he had received two degrees from Stonehill College back in 1979, accounting and computer science. Third Point discovered that Thompson had only received the accounting degree and CEO Daniel Loeb made the formal announcement. Scott Thompson apologized to Yahoo but it appears that was not enough.

The Thompson era was brief. Time will tell how this situation will affect Yahoo’s effort to once again be a vital player in the search engine game.

“Introducing the New Bing: Spend Less Time Searching, More Time Doing” is the name of the latest blog post from the Bing Team and is a great piece to read whether you use the Bing search service or another tool. There is a video that lasts just over one minute which briefly explains Bing’s latest commitment to transforming search into a social experience. The rest of the post describes the upcoming changes to Bing in a brief but through style.

After reading the post if you like what you read and are interested in trying the service, sign up for the Bing newsletter here. It appears that Microsoft plans to roll out the service gradually to the online world, so signing up early may increase your chances of being an individual that gets to try the service before the entire online community has the same access.

The primary changes have to do with the new layout which will feature a three-column design: Core Web Results; Snapshot; Sidebar.

The left-hand column will be the Core Web Results. This column will remove any social media updates, allowing the user to find search results that are more crisp, clear and relevant to the original search term.

Snapshot takes over the middle column and is designed to give you even more relevant information directly related to your search. While Core Web Results delivers relevant links regarding the search, Snapshot adds in more information such as restaurant reviews, maps and even provides the ability to book reservations at a restaurant or hotel.

The online discussion has already primarily centered on the right-hand column, Sidebar. Bing took social information that used to be a part of the general search results and moved those to the Sidebar for easy and more visible access. Bing’s theory is that many people use recommendations from friends when making a decision about a product or service. Moving that type of social interaction to one specific area will make it easier for users to focus on content via social media without the content being obtrusive to general search.

It shall be interesting to see how the latest update to Bing affects Google’s stranglehold on search and its percentage of users. Take some time to read the articles below for even more insight to the latest changes to Bing.

Have a great weekend!

CNet – Jay Greene – Bing deepens Facebook integration, connecting searchers with friends
Mashable Social Media – Lance Ulanoff – Bing Reinvents Social Search and Discovery
Search Engine Land – Danny Sullivan – Bing Relaunches, Features New Social Sidebar
Search Engine Watch – Danny Goodwin – Bing Introduces 3-Column Search Results With Snapshots, Social Sidebar
TechCrunch – Josh Constine – Bing’s Biggest Redesign Yet Puts Pure Algorithmic Results Up Front, Sticks Context and Social In The Sidebar

• Improvement to spell corrections in terms of international searches (codename: Potage) – Spelling corrections are common when a user performs a search. However, this can be frustrating for the user if the way you spelled a search is correct but assumed to be incorrect due to a language barrier. This algorithm update helps prevent that from occurring.
• Local search results for organizational websites will improve (codename: ImpOrgMap2) – Why search for an organization’s website and not receive a result specific to the country you are in? This update will help Google generate a search for an organizational website that may be worldwide specific to where you live.
• Overuse of keywords (codename: Spam) – People are well aware of the latest Penguin algorithm. Codename Spam improves the classifiers Google has in place to determine when a site is trying to cheat the algorithm and stuff content with keywords rather than create relevant content.
• SafeSearch for videos and images (codename: SafeSearch) – Users should be happy that this is an area Google is constantly working hard on to improve. SafeSearch already helps filter out adult content that may appear in your search results. The update will help improve that filter even more.
• Search results catered to language (codename: Raquel) – Since many times the same search term will possess a different meaning in a different language, Raquel helps to generate the most relevant search result depending on what language is used to perform the query.

Please be sure to read the entire May 4 Google Search blog post to gain information about the remaining 47 April updates.

Yes, there are studies that show different social networks deliver different prime exposure times. Bitly is a website that helps a user organize and share links in an effective manner. The company recently published a blog post Tuesday, May 8 comparing peak share times on various social mediums. The results are very interesting and could influence how you post on different social brands and when to post. Let us focus on Facebook and Twitter.

Surprisingly, even though Facebook and Twitter are social mediums that people use on a 24/7 basis, the weekend is not the most opportune time to post on the two social networks. Tweeting after 3:00pm on a Friday may not work well if you are trying to reach a wide audience and continues throughout the weekend. Facebook is similar with weekend posts drawing less attention than a post that was created in the middle of the week. This type of data leads one to believe that more attention is paid to social media during working hours of the day than when people are enjoying social time.

When should you be using these two social mediums to reach the largest number of people? When posting to Facebook try to post between 1:00-4:00pm with the absolute peak time being at 3:00pm on a Wednesday. Twitter? Focus on Tweeting between 9:00am-3:00pm Monday-Thursday with the last two hours of that window being an outstanding time to Tweet.

Make sure to read the Time is on Your Side post from Bitly to gain even more insight about peak Facebook and Twitter times, as well as information about using Tumblr.

The official Bing search blog from May 2 delivered an update to Bing users about a significant style and design update to the search engine. The update would affect any search done on Bing and provide the individual with a brand new search experience.

There are three major changes to the design of a Bing SERP. The original design had these features:

1. The left hand nav bar contained related searches and search history options.
2. The top of the page had a gray bar.
3. There was a small amount of spacing between results.

Here is a recent screenshot of a search done for Silverback Marketing using Bing.

First, you will notice that the left hand nav bar has been eliminated. The related searches that used to appear there have now been moved underneath the sponsored advertisements on the right hand nav bar. Second, the gray bar has been completely eliminated, replaced by five Menu items: Web; Images; Videos; Maps; More. Third, the minimal spacing has been widened, allowing Microsoft to add more search information such as local information, search history and social media results.

Once again Bing is stressing the “decision engine” concept. The writer of the Bing post was Sally Salas, Principal Group Program Manager for Bing. According to Salas “our goal is to help people spend less time searching and more time doing.” Let’s see how users respond to this latest update to Bing.

A Stanford researcher by the name of Jonathan Mayer discovered a tool Google had been utilizing this past February that clearly represents a FTC violation. The method Google was using was ingenious, basically hiding a web form within online ads on the Safari browser. The tool allowed Google to bypass the privacy settings Safari had in place and install tracking cookies as a result. If a user clicked the +1 button on an ad Safari was tricked into believing that the user had submitted a web form. Therefore, Safari would in turn allow Google to install tracking cookies on that particular user’s device. Ouch …

A Bloomberg report from Friday, May 4 indicates that Google and the FTC are currently negotiating in terms of what the penalties may be for this case. If it is true that Google knowingly deceived Safari in order to use Safari as an avenue to install tracking cookies, this would be an extreme violation of the privacy rights of online users. This fine could be more than 10 million dollars and would represent the first time the FTC has fined an agency over internet privacy.

Google signed a decree with the FTC in 2011 that would remain in effect for twenty years. The settlement required Google to be diligent in regards to its practices surrounding the privacy of user data and submit to regular privacy audits. This latest case against Google could be particularly damaging if the Safari breach is true since that would a breach of contract just one year later. This will be a topic Silverback Marketing will continue to follow for our readers.

It is official folks. Google has launched a new update to its search that is being referred to as Penguin. Last year Google gave us the Panda update, an algorithm that was designed to penalize content farms for posting poor content online, as well as penalizing websites that directly copied and pasted content from other established sites. The idea was to ensure that webmasters and content writers were being diligent about creating unique, new and relevant content. The effect was positive for some websites, extremely negative for others. Webmasters now had to formulate new strategies in order to effectively optimize their sites.

The Penguin update adds a new twist to the formula. Penguin is designed to penalize webspam while continuing to promote high quality content, all while working to rid the internet of businesses and websites that Google determines are cheating the system. The theory is that websites utilizing spam are more conscious about “over-optimization” of the website rather than focusing on creating a great site with great content.

Penguin appears to have officially launched on Tuesday, April 24. Owners of websites need to check their statistics and determine if there has been a significant loss in traffic and ranking since that date. The problem with the research is the latest update to the Panda algorithm appears to have been just five days earlier on April 19. This may cause some confusion for webmasters. However, if you can decisively determine that you experienced a drop April 24-25, you can feel pretty confident Penguin was the cause.

Take a look at your content and determine if the content is well-written and relevant. You also need to see if you have “over-stuffed” keywords within the content because that is one area the Penguin update looks for when scraping your site. SEO is not dead but once again the latest rules from Google are causing us to create new strategies.

Good luck and have a great weekend!

Local SEO Guide – Andrew Shotland – @MattCutts Did Your Penguin Just Break Google?
Search Engine Watch – Lisa Buyer – 17 Ways SMBs Can Survive the Google Penguin Update Effect
SEO.com – Claye Stokes – How to recover from the Penguin Webspam Update: Tips from SMX Toronto
SEO Moz – Dr. Pete – Penguins, Pandas, and Panic at the Zoo
SEO Services – Meenakshi – Google Launches “Penguin Update” to Target Webspam