Online Marketing Blog from metrocafe311

It seems that whenever something new rolls out online, one of the immediate thoughts is “Will this one be the Google Killer?” And the immediate answer, is most often “No way.” Google continues to take its search engine and deliver even more relevant results for its users. This time the relevant results are in the hands of the Google searchers, with new tools such as Search Options and Google Squared.

John Kennedy at Silicon Republic wrote on the subject last week, giving us the heads up on the news, following the second Google Searchology event. Google has announced plans to roll out a new tool called Search Options; which will give users control over their search results. The tool will allow users to apply filters, where they can view only the content they want, making searches faster and easier. For example, you might be doing some research on Twitter but you only want articles that give recent statistics, so you can easily apply a filter that would deliver your results for the “most recent.”

As an agency that delivers search engine optimisation services to clients, this news is crucial for us at metrocafe311 to understand. While this changes the way things will be “naturally” ranked for some, it emphasizes the need for websites to ensure they are being properly indexed by Google, and being indexed for the right things. All the more reason to understand how search-engine friendly your website is, and whether or not the user is satisfied when they land on your site.

Google tells us the Search Options tool will continue to improve, with even more useful features in the future. This is where they are hoping the “snippets” of information that appears in our results pages will become even more relevant and more rich. They are encouraging web publishers to use “microformats” and “RDFa” standards to mark up their HTML, which will make it easier for Google to pull the richest content for users.

The Searchology event also delivered news of Google Squared; which will deliver a list of facts and information for a search query, as opposed to a list of web pages. This may be where our search engine optimisation efforts still remain key. Making sure that your “facts” appear for the appropriate searches.

While it is clear that these announcements of new and improved Google make it even harder for someone else to catch up, it is timely that Microsoft plan to release a new Search Engine themselves, next week. The Wall Street Journal announced the news, saying “The new search engine…is designed to better organise search results for consumers to minimise the amount of time they spend clicking around Web pages looking for information.” Sounds familiar. Despite a large marketing and advertising campaign they are hoping will help boost the search engine’s usage, I’d say the search engine will be far from the “google killer” it so desperately hopes to be. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Emer Lawn, Online Marketing Executive, metrocafe311