Posted by admin on February 1, 2011 under Google, SEM | 
Many people were quick to see the writing on the wall for the real estate listings that Google was posting. Brian McClendon who is the VP of Google Earth and Maps made a statement about that functionality and said, “In part due to low usage, the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites, and the infrastructure challenge posed by the impending retirement of the Google Base API (used by listing providers to submit listings), we’ve decided to discontinue the real estate feature within Google Maps on February 10, 2011.”
But in case you missed it, he said, “the impending retirement of the Google Base API“. For those not familiar with Google Base, thousands of businesses use this to upload their product databases of what could be thousands of products into Google’s databases. Those products then would show up in Google Base searches, Froogle and even in some cases product listings in normal Google searches when a search was product related, i.e. someone searching for Tickle me Elmo or Shammy 12 packs (or any search that is obviously a searcher looking for a product).
Many speculated over a year ago that Google Base would die anyway with the fast approaching “Google Merchant Center”, but until now it has been just that. Speculation. If your business does truly rely on Google Base as part of its online strategy, make sure that you read up on the new changes. And definitely make sure you check your messages area when you log in. Some users are already reporting messages from Google informing them of changes that directly affect them such as attribute alterations to their datafeeds. You have been warned. Again…
Posted by admin on October 5, 2010 under Google, Keyword Research, SEM, SEO |
For those way behind or that don’t keep up with SEO news, Google released a tool they had in hiding called Google Instant over a month ago. If you’ve used Google, you’ve used it. The feature offers up search suggestions as you begin typing in the search window.
While many SEO professionals have screamed that this is going to kill SEO and make it irrelevant, there is a second school of thought that it will begin to even the playing field. For every bigger player at the top of the search engines for broader terms, there are thousands of smaller players that rank well for more specific terms.
This addition by Google not only helps the searcher consider terms that they may not have thought of, but it also helps them to possibly discover a smaller player. For instance, in the example above, someone searching for SEO may not have considered searching for SEO tools or SEO software. They may have simply planned on typing in “SEO” and hoping for the best.
This Google offering not only helps the person searching discover other searching options that are based on what people are actually searching for, but also provides them with more terms that will allow them to discover some smaller players that don’t rank for broader terms.
While sites ranking for broader terms will certainly cry foul because they see it as a distraction to the searcher, this change will help to reduce bandwidth for Google by helping searchers find what they want quicker and begin to level the playing field for smaller players.
While this change is fantastic to searchers, it will also increase revenue for Google because players who previously ignored the longer tail terms will have to rethink their SEM strategy to include those smaller traffic terms if they themselves aren’t ranking for those longer tail terms. SEM professionals may want to keep their eye on sudden spikes on campaigns that once were dormant that all of sudden start seeing life.
Either way, Google Instant appears to be good for everyone.
