Google Keywords Tool Now Shows Mobile Search Keywords

As I mentioned in my 7 Notable points for Internet marketers in 2011, Mobile is going to get bigger this year and it seems Google is doing everything possible to help the search marketers to target this growing mobile audience.

Google Adwords campaign by default includes desktop as well as mobile devices to run
your ads, however, over the last year we have seen further fine tuning of this capabilities, which now allows paid search professionals to target their mobile ads through Google Adwords to users on specific mobile devices and on specific carriers.

Google mentions that in the third quarter of 2010, Google mobile searches jumped 130% year over year, which indicates that more and more advertisers would be interested in mobile ads.Now to further help Adwords consultants Google has enhanced its Keyword research tool to show mobile specific data. The Google keyword tool now offers options for users to see keyword ideas and statistics for various types of mobile devices under "Advanced Options".

The tool is pretty detailed and there are multiple options to choose from, you can choose to view keyword ideas for -

• Mobile device with full internet browsers ( iPhone, Android and similar smart phones)


• Mobile WAP devices ( most Internet enabled phones)


• All Mobile browsers


• Besides, desktop and laptop devices

This could be a fantastic addition for search marketers to understand which queries are specific to or are more common on which type of device. It’s a good idea to search for your target keywords using the keyword research tool, set once for “Desktop and Laptop Devices” and once for mobile. Export both the options in Excel and the compare the volume for common keywords across platforms to better understand the search trends by device.

Also, I would strongly recommend keeping a close eye on your analytics to see if you are getting a sizable traffic volume from mobile devices. Based on this consider setting up separate “mobile only” campaigns, so you can further experiment with these platforms.

It would not be surprising if Bing also beefs up its mobile user targeting options and starts offering new tools of similar nature. This enhancement to Google’s keyword research tool is definitely a great addition for all SEO and Adwords consultants in the New Year and I am sure there would be a lot more new stuff happening in the mobile marketing space this year.

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Google Plus One Likely to Effect Search Results and Quality Score

Google is adding its own version of “Like” button with the launch of +1 ( Plus One) in an attempt to make search more social. Now Google will allow users to vote Plus One for search results as well as on Search ads. Users will get to see both the total number of Plus One votes along with names and contacts of their contacts who have shown their preference.

While it looks primarily like Google’s attempt to replicate Facebook’s “Like” what does it mean for search marketers ? A Plus One vote is a clear indication of human preference and there can be no better judge of a webpage’s quality than a real human user. Google is definitely going to use this as a signal in its algorithm. In fact, this time Matt Cutts himself clearly admits to this , “"When someone recommends something, that's a pretty good indicator of quality," said Matt Cutts. "We are strongly looking at using this in our rankings."

Similarly, on the Adwords front, we already know that high quality score would mean lower CPC and better exposure and this is going to get a shot in the arm with implementation of this Plus One feature. Ads that get a Plus One would likely have a higher quality score, resulting in better performance for the advertiser. This has been further confirmed with the statement by ads group product manager Christian Oestlien, "We will provide reporting in AdWords for plus-ones” "Our belief is that advertisers will see increased performance from ads with personalized annotations."

Inbound links have been one of the strongest signals for organic ranking for a long time now and now as Google has started to become more social , incorporating personalized search results, real time twitter results etc, Plus One is definitely going to be a big step ahead in that direction and can prove to be a key player in determining relevance for algorithmic search results.

Also, looking at it from Google’s perspective, introducing Plus One has multiple benefits. Besides getting a new powerful signal to tidy up the search results, Plus One can actually give Google a second chance to penetrate the social web. When the user tries to hit Plus One for the first time, they would be invited to create a Google profile and adjust the privacy settings. Also, Google would offer publishers the option to embed Plus One buttons to their content pages, so users can vote on content on other websites beyond search results pages and most webmasters would be more than eager to implement this as they realize that Plus One votes can help them get better with organic search results. A positive aspect of this for webmasters would be that to get this Plus One embed code, they would need to login to the Google Webmasters Tools. So the ones who have not yet registered with Webmaster tools would probably have one more reason to do it now.

Everything said and done, it would be fun to see how BlackHats and spammers use the Plus One votes to their advantage. Though Google has been doing a fair job at fighting them, there has been one too many cases where BlackHats and spammers have gamed the Google results and introducing such a simple, manual signal to influence the search results might throw a new challenge for the Google anti-spam team.

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Introducing Descriptive Terms in Local Search Results

(Cross-posted on the Google Places and Small Business blogs.)



Whether it’s to find a great place for dinner or to grab a cup of coffee, I often look up places directly on Google Maps. Evaluating my options and making a choice just got even easier thanks to the list of associated terms that now appears directly in the local search results.



Starting today, Google Maps search results in the U.S. and Great Britain will include some of the phrases which are most frequently used to describe those places. These phrases come from sources all across the web, such as reviews, web pages and other online references, and they can help people quickly identify the characteristics that make a particular place unique. It’s like an opportunity to ask the business owner or its patrons “What’s good here?” or “What do most people get here?”



For example, if I’m looking for a place to relax and enjoy a great cup of coffee this weekend, I can see at a quick glance that Cafe Grumpy could be the perfect spot. Besides being known for their “latte” and “great coffee,” they have a “no laptop” policy — exactly what I was hoping for since I’d like to unplug and take a break from work this weekend.

Or if I’m planning to visit friends on the west coast and need to organize a night out, Rose & Crown could be an excellent choice given their “great beer selection” and “trivia night” games on site!

Whether you’re looking for local businesses in your neighborhood or in another city, these descriptive terms can help you find the places right for you. We hope you use these terms to discover new and interesting places on Google Maps, and watch for this feature to appear in Place search on Google.com and Google Maps for mobile soon!



Posted by Manjunath Srinivasaiah, Software Engineer

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Using search patterns to track dengue fever

What does baseball have in common with gazebos? We’re not sure, except that people search on Google for both terms in similar patterns. Last week we introduced Google Correlate, an experimental tool enabling researchers to model real-world behavior using search trends. We’ve heard from many researchers who want to mine this data for new discoveries about economics and public health—much like we designed Google Flu Trends to give an early warning about flu outbreaks. We hope they’re able to make useful discoveries with Google Correlate.

While building Google Correlate, we used it to create an early warning system for another important disease. Google Dengue Trends in Bolivia, Brazil, India, Indonesia and Singapore provides an additional surveillance tool for a disease that affects about 100 million people each year. Dengue is a virus spread through mosquito bites that creates symptoms including high fever, severe headache and pain, rash and mild bleeding. There is no vaccine or treatment, so public health efforts are largely focused on helping people take steps to prevent being infected with the disease.

Singapore has an impressively timely surveillance system for dengue, but in many countries it can take weeks or months for dengue case data to be collected, analyzed and made available. During the dengue outbreak at last year’s Commonwealth Games, we discussed the need for timely dengue information. With help from Professor John Brownstein and Emily Chan from HealthMap, a program at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, we were able to create our system. Using the dengue case count data provided by Ministries of Health and the World Health Organization, we’re able to build a model that offers near real-time estimates of dengue activity based on the popularity of certain search terms. Google Dengue Trends is automatically updated every day, thereby providing an early indicator of dengue activity.

The methodology for this system is the same as that for Google Flu Trends and is outlined in a newly published article in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

We hope the early warning provided by Google Dengue Trends helps health officials and the public prepare for potential dengue outbreaks. For those who live in places where dengue is present, remember to follow the advice of health officials to prevent infection by wearing mosquito repellent and emptying any containers that lure mosquito larvae by gathering standing water.

Posted by Vikram Sahai, Software Engineer

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Yahoo Tries Its Hand At Mobile App Search

If apps replace the mobile web, and along with it, traditional search, then the search engines need to figure out how to adapt. Yahoo is taking a tiny step towards embracing mobile apps with a few new products for searching apps. It is launching both iPhone and Android apps for app discovery, as well as desktop app search experience.

The iPhone app is called Yahoo! AppSpot, and I’ve been trying it out a little. AppSpot is about app discovery, much like Chomp, Appsfire, or Disrupt startup Do@. It scans your apps so that it won;t show you apps you already have in results, and also takes into account what you own to show related apps. AppSpot gives you daily recommendations in various categories (music, games, news, social networking, travel, utilities) with the now-familiar slot-machine rolling UI. It also lets you search for apps by keyword, and returns results based on title, description, popularity, and other factors.

The results aren’t horrible, but they aren’t spectacular either, from what I can tell. A search for “music” brings up Pandora Radio as the top pick (duh), followed by Shazam, Last.fm, Yahoo Music, and NPR Music. Well, at least it got the first one right.

A search for “photo” apps beings up Shuuterfly for iPhone as the top result for me, followed by PhotoFunia, PhotoSync, and Photo Frames LITE. Wrong. To be fair, I have most of the usual suspect photo apps already on my iPhone (Instagram, PicPlz, Path, Color), but still there are so many like Hipstagram or With that I don’t have and didn’t even show up. Quite frankly, I’d be better off using Alexia’s flow chart. (Although, PhotoSync does sound worthwhile, until iCloud turns its wireless syncing into a feature of iPhoto).

At least AppSpot is an improvement over the native app search in iTunes. It’s faster, and there are more ways to search. It doesn’t just give you the top 100 apps in each category when you are looking for recommendations. Given that the App Store now has more than 425,000 apps, that’s a good thing.

I haven’tested out the Android app, but I suspect it works pretty much the same, except for Android apps. There are 200,000 of those. The Website delivers results along with a QR code that can be scanned by the apps so that you can basically transfer a search result over. Although if you have to open up your app to scan the 2-D barcode from your screen, you might as well just search on your phone.

Yahoo is making a play here for the app discovery market, but the app discovery startups out there need not shake in their boots just yet.

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AppsFire

Chomp

do@

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