Is Google A Good Neighbor When It Comes to Local Search?

IS GOOGLE A GOOD NEIGHBOR?Danny Sullivan, Founding Editor,

MarketingLand.com & SearchEngineLand.com

In This Talk…• Google: The biggest house on the block

• What’s up with all that construction:Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird?

• Is Google trying to price you out of the neighborhood?

• What is the impact of mobile?

• What’s up with wearables & search?

@dannysullivan

Google: The Neighbor You Can’t Ignore

@dannysullivan

Google & The Search Habit• Google is not only way people find

apartments, but it is:

• a primary search habit for any type of search

• unlikely to be unseated by any challenger

• So, what is Google up to lately and what’s in store for the future?

@dannysullivan

Of Panda, Penguin & Hummingbirds

• Is Google out to get people with all these animal actions?• what are these animal actions?

• The goal is really to improve search results because ultimately, Google works for searchers, not publishers

@dannysullivan

Behind The Construction….

@dannysullivan

Panda: Targeting “Thin” Content• Launched Feb. 2011,

designed to keep low-quality or “thin” content from ranking

• Roughly every month,Google filters everything though Panda to trap new stuff & free others

• If goal was to just help Google, it hurt top Google partners like Demand Media

• Conspiracy threat: LOW

@dannysullivan

Penguin: Targeting Link Spam• Launched April 2012, meant to fight spam - especially bad links

• Every 6 months or so,Google filters everything though Penguin to findspam regular systems miss

• Did Google really benefit? For any questionable sites that lost ranks, others rose up

• Conspiracy threat: LOW• Crazy link rule annoyance factor: HIGH

@dannysullivan

Link Rule Insanity• Paid links have long been warned against…• But it’s more complicated as native

advertising & native ads have grown

• Widgets get popular, so Google warns against them

• Infographics get popular, so Google warns against them

• Guest posting gets popular, so Google warns against “blogging for links”

@dannysullivan

Link Rule Insanity• Feels safer now not to link to anyone or to

“nofollow” everything

• Feels insane Google punishes for bad links rather than simply discounts credit

@dannysullivan

Hummingbird: The New EngineIn Google’s Search Engine• Announced in Sept. 2013,

an entire rebuild ofGoogle’s search engine

• Panda & Penguin areparts of that engine

• New engine can better tap into “signals” or “fuel” to rank results

• A major change is improved support for “entities” and “entity search”

@dannysullivan

Entities & Entity Search• People, Places & Things

@dannysullivan

Entities & Entity Search

@dannysullivan

EXAMPLE: • A search for “obama” in the past would look

for those letters in that order

• With entity search, Obama is understood as a person that can be connected to other people and various facts….

• Google (& Bing) are learning to search not just for matching patterns of letters

Optimizing For Entity Search• Make use of local “structured markup”

meta data • Mainly location now but more may come

@dannysullivan

Establish Authority via Authorship

• Use rel=“author” markup on blog posts • Use authorship on pages with real authors;

don’t fake it for listings

@dannysullivan

Google+ Local

• Use Google+ for your business• Big impact on personalized results; you

rank better if “friends” with people• Yes, Google+ might go away or change but

local listings will still remain crucial…

@dannysullivan

Real Conspiracy: Ads, Ads, Ads!

@dannysullivan

Then Again, Bing’s In On It Too

@dannysullivan

Fear The Knowledge Graph Carousel?

• What’s happening with hotels may be the future for apartments….

@dannysullivan

Paid Inclusion• Hotel Finder is free,

based largely on Google+ Local but with ad integration

• Future could belike Google Shopping,pay-to-play

@dannysullivan

Moving On To Mobile…• Everyone’s talking about a “mobile first”

world

• You don’t need a mobile site to rank better, but…

• A site with problems for smartphone searches on Google may not rank as well

• More important: knowing how to react in “Always On” mobile search world…

@dannysullivan

Can You Handle The Calls?

@dannysullivan

Soft Landing For Mobile Visitors?

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• Click-to-call? • Mobile-friendly version of site?• App for repeat visitors?

The Wearable Search

• Notifications on your phone

• On your wrist

• And even in your eyes…

@dannysullivan

Where Wearables May Go• People may not flock

to Glass but nearly1/2 like idea of smartwatches

• “Agents” like Google Now & Cortana getting smarter at predictive search

• Location “gating” likely key in future

@dannysullivan

Takeaways• Google will keep working to reward “brands” -

big or small

• Google needs brands - make yourself essential

• Expect the “free” space to diminish; Pay to Play

• Structured data may offer new & perhaps better targeted prospects

• Deliver content that a mobile audience wants

• Wearables illustrate that search isn’t just keywords in a box on Google; it’s any method people seek information

@dannysullivan

Links & Resources

http://searchengineland.com http://marketingland.com

Articles & Links: • How To Tell Search Engines What “Entities” Are On Your Web Pages

• Search Engine Land’s Guide to Schema & Markup

• Google: Structured Data Guide For Organizations

• 5 Tips To Kill The Competition In Local Search

• Study: 61 Percent Of Mobile Callers Ready To Convert

• The Future Of Advertising In Your Eyes Today: Google Glass & Field Trip

• Survey: Nearly Half Of Americans Interested In Wearable Tech

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