And finally there it was: Google Plus (or +). Almost every blog, national and international, talked about it and it even made the news. And everyone had an opinion, despite of the fact that they had access or not. We [...]]]> And finally there it was: Google Plus (or +). Almost every blog, national and international, talked about it and it even made the news. And everyone had an opinion, despite of the fact that they had access or not. We already discussed the Google +1 button here on Multilingual Search, but now we have the complete social network.

There are a lot of great introduction posts, so I won’t delve into the mechanics. But Google Plus is more than just a ‘social network’ or a ‘Facebook clone’. It embodies a new way of thinking and operating for Google and it is actually much, much more. And everything Google is does, is to make more money, or at least keep its current money cows (especially online advertising).

Google Plus In Summary

As said, I won’t go into the basics of Google Plus. A lot of you will probably already have an account and are familiar with how it works. For those of you who are interested, here an overview of great articles:

Google: Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web
Google’s own press release, with handy instruction video’s.

State of Search: How to use Google+ – a quick guide and thoughts on Google Plus
Google+ tested by State of Search. Nice recap.

State of Search: The first responses from the expert marketeers
Wat do the experts say?

Wired: Inside Google+ – how the search giant plans to go social
A very lengthy article, but worth the read. See how important social is to Google, and how the organisation has changed to adapt to the human side of the web. A great look ‘behind the scenes’.

The Integration Of Google Plus

One of the first tests Google revealed that Google’s own employees found Google Plus too difficult. It was like Facebook, in its entirety, after being in stealth mode for 7 years, was released all at once. That’s why Google decided to drop some of the Google Plus features and make it more simple. This means that there are a couple of features already lined up, waiting for Google Plus’ users to be familiar with the current features.

One of the toughest obstacles was the integration of Google Plus with other Google products. Google took its time to get this right. Wired describes Google Plus not as a typical productrelease, but as the ‘result of a lengthy and urgent effort involving almost all of the company’s products’.

During development more than a dozen Google products were involved. Google goes on saying that Google Plus isn’t a ‘Facebook Killer’, but a transformation to give the people a better Google. Fun fact: Google mentions a research which shows users are just a little bit more satisfied with Facebook then they are with the IRS.

This complete company approach to Google Plus shows in a lot of Google’s Current products:

• Measuring social media activities via Google Analytics
• Measuring Google +1 using Webmaster tools
• Adding Google+ to the ‘sandbar’ (Google’s topbar)
• Adding Google +1 to the search engine results and AdWords ads
• The (temporary?) removal of Google Realtime Search because of the Google Plus integration
• A ‘people’ section in Gmail (and a new layout)
• Showing the author in the search results

All these changes make Google more human, personal and social. They put the user at the center of everything, and the user’s network plays an important part.

The social aspect of Google will become more and more important. Google Plus is still in its testing phase and Google doesn’t want to make the same mistakes they did with Wave and, especially, Buzz (with Buzz they created a complete network, connecting people without permissions, a big no no).

The Social Future

Google Plus is here to stay. It is a product that Google has high expectations of. Soon we will see more and more features, and the social aspect of Google will start to become even more visible. Seo by the Sea discusses patents showing a direction Google could take. Instant chatting is one of them, where browsing the web becomes even more social. It also shows Google looking into options for showing human Questions/Answers (like Aardvark) in the search results. Just as scientific papers can give you the right answer, so can users from your own network.

Add to all this Google Plus and the increasing integration amongst all the Google products and Google is getting more and more ‘tailor made’.

Business Model

But Google isn’t making its company more social for nothing. Google knows that social holds the future (at least in some areas) and Google wants to be biggest player. It must have frustrated Google that Facebook wouldn’t share its oh so valuable user data. Well, Google must have thought, why not create our own network, build our own community and gather the information ourselves.

And Google has tried to avoid making the same mistakes Facebook and Buzz made. Google and Google Plus have to be known for their privacy and control. “You can trust us with your information”. And by giving Google Plus users the option to share certain bits of information only with certain people (Circles) Google has given the public a nice tool and a sense of security. But one mistake, one slip up and Google’s carefully crafted image can be destroyed.

For now, Google is trying to gain that trust and get more and more people on the Google Plus bandwagon. And with that, the information will come. And that information can be another source of revenue for Google. Besides the ’social graph’, the constant stream of personal information and messages, users can tell Google there interests with Sparks. Google will then serve relevant and newsworthy content. Wired says:

“…but it’s reasonable to assume that before long, the company will use its algorithmic powers to produce a single flow that skillfully mixes those apples and oranges. Google has already pulled off a much more complicated version of that trick with Universal Search, which includes web pages, images, videos, books, Tweets, news items and other formats among its results. And that’s only the beginning. With its deep resources of information about its users, Google is capable of delivering a comprehensive collection of information, tailored exactly to one’s needs and interests”

Even more to the point:

“This mother of all streams would be the equivalent of an intravenous feed of information, with inclusion of all the vital content from our social graph and the world at large (Google calls this the “interest graph”). It would scroll forever, and everything would be relevant. If Google’s original goal was to expeditiously dispatch us elsewhere, with this near-clairvoyant stream, Google could turn us into search potatoes who never leave.”

Where Google’s previous goal was to make people leave as soon as possible, by giving them the best search results, it now wants to keep them as long as possible by serving them a constant stream of relevant, interesting information.

And that’s where the money is: when we all start using Google Plus, and Google has gained the trust of its users, they can slowly start molding the internet to its users needs. And that also means: ads that are really relevant.

It also means: more (and better) ways for companies to advertise. Ads can be shown in the regular search engine (with better targeting), but can also be added to Google Plus. In the Sparks stream, ads can be shown that are highly relevant and are in line with the interests of the user. And there is a lot of white space in Google Plus when you log on, which just screams “money”, eh.. I mean, ads.

But Google has a long way to go. A road filled with obstacles, but one that Google probably has mapped out. Making Google more social will make Google better. Better for its user, and better for Google itself, as in: more profits.

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Finally, since last week people in The Netherlands (and the rest of Europe) can add the Google +1 button to their website. Also, Twitter has released their Follow-button, and Bing and Facebook are continuing their partnership. And with all this [...]]]> Finally, since last week people in The Netherlands (and the rest of Europe) can add the Google +1 button to their website. Also, Twitter has released their Follow-button, and Bing and Facebook are continuing their partnership. And with all this comes the battle for the clicks. With personalized search results, followers on Twitter, likes on Facebook the question arises: isn’t it a bit too much?

Social media and content

International research from Nielsen shows that 23% of all the messages on social media contain links to publicized content. This translates to 27.00.000 (!) pieces of content that are shared on a daily basis. To make it easier to share content, you can add share buttons to your websites. For our company blog we chose only the most relevant and used social media channels: Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. We don’t use Hyves, the number one Dutch network site: Hyves has a different audience (much younger), a less professional image and is hardly used by our target audience. And this is just The Netherlands. In the US we see share buttons for Google Buzz, Reddit, Yahoo!, StumpleUpon and Digg (to name a few)!

Social media and the SERPs

The exact influence of social signals on search results isn’t quite clear yet, but  we know that they are getting more and more important. Earlier this year Google stated that social signals (like Tweets and Likes) did not have a direct impact on rankings, but they do look at those signals. But, as Search News Central stated, social signals do have an influence on the search results, albeit indirect. Search engines can also use them for content discovery for instance. Also, social media can be another source of traffic.

Search results are also getting more and more personalized and we get to see when one of our (online) friends has shared a webpage. And with Google +1 and the Bing/Facebook partnership it seems that social media channels are having a bigger and bigger impact on search results.

Google +1 and Bing/Facebook

Google was clearly looking for a way to integrate social media channels with its search results when Bing announced their partnership with Facebook last year. A blow in the face.

To bridge the gap, Google announced +1 in April: its own “like” button for search results and (since last week) for webpages. Check out Google +1 on the official website or watch the introduction video here.

Unfortunately for Google, Bing beats them to the punch: currently the search results in Bing are powered by Facebook data.

As far as I know Google has said nothing about +1 impacting the search results (directly). Besides that, the lack of a Google community can be a real problem for the search giant: where Bing can use the widely adopted Facebook, Google has to convince its users to create a full profile and be logged in. It is therefore more likely that users will see personalized results in Bing (via Facebook) then in Google (via +1).

But, by making the +1 button available for websites, websites are bound to use it, just in case Google +1 does affect the search rankings. We  have integrated the button just to be safe. The button also makes it easier for people to +1 pages, so we should see an increase in the usage of this new feature.

An advantage of Google +1 is the stats we can get by using Google Webmaster Tools, although I would like to see them integrated with Google Analytics. With Facebook it is more difficult to track and measure your “likes”, although the handy people at Webanalisten have found a way to track them in Analytics (Dutch article).

The Twitter Follow button

And to make it even more complicated (and certainly more crowded), we can now add the Twitter Follow button. Now users can  not only tweet about a page, but with one mouseclick they can connect their Twitter profiles to yours. Which is a very welcome addition, but where to put it!

It’s getting crowded in here

The fight is on: what social media channel will get a place on your website? Here in The Netherlands we only have a handful of social media channels that are heavily in use. But still, even for the Dutch (and the rest of Europe), it’s getting crowded and it is getting tougher and tougher to integrate all those buttons. Which channels should we add to our website so that our users can share the content easily, we reap the benefits and still maintain a great user experience?

For the Dutch readers I would advise to add the Google +1 button. We don’t know what the impact will be, and you might as well get a head start on Google’s social network. Since Google has 95% market share, we can ignore Bing for now. It doesn’t look like Microsoft will gain market share any time soon. Besides that, add the share buttons that are relevant to your business. LinkedIn is very popular here, and Facebook is the more mature Hyves.

Good luck, and I am curious how users from other countries are dealing with the increase in buttons and social media channels that users in their country are using. Do let me know!

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In February Google officially announced that the Google Merchant Center will launch in Spain, Italy and the Netherlands. Google Shopping is the vertical search engine from Google where [...]]]> In February Google officially announced that the Google Merchant Center will launch in Spain, Italy and the Netherlands. Google Shopping is the vertical search engine from Google where visitors, as you’ve already guessed, can search for products. As a company, you can take part by introducing and tracking your products using data feeds. And now, after a few months of preparation, it has finally arrived here in The Netherlands and you can check it here: Google Product Search Netherlands.

Google Product Search

In the United States and the United Kingdom, Google Shopping goes under the name of Google Product Search. As mentioned, Shopping is a vertical search engine for products. It is also a price comparison site like Beslist.nl or Kieskeurig.nl. A simple comparison shows that there is little difference between sites like these and Google Shopping:

Even the detailed product pages are very similar:

Personally, I think Google Shopping is even a bit nicer to look at. The use of more white space makes it easier on the eyes in my opinion.

Visitors can also look for products at Google Shopping and then look into which providers there are and compare prices. And here too, visitors can write reviews of the products.

An advantage for the consumer is that Google has given suggestions for certain products. This enables the user to search faster, but it can also provide the consumer with ideas for other alternative products.

Providing your product data

But how can you get your product data into Google? To do that, you will have to register with Google Merchant Center.  Here you will have to add a product feed (data feed) which you will send to Google. The whole process is, as we may expect from Google, documented in their Help Center.

You can provide your product data in text-DSV format or in XML format. The guidelines for the feed specification can be read here:

The following components are required:

• International product code
• Title of the product
• Description (text description of the product)
• Condition (state of the product, such as “new”)
• Price of the product
• Link to your own website
• GTIN: (the barcode, often EAN code) – since the 3^rd of May this is mandatory)

And strongly recommended are:

• Image link
• Brand
• MPN (part or model number of the manufacturer)
• Quantity
• Delivery information for the product

There are more product data you can pass on to Google, you can look them all up here.

Uploading the feed can be through a planned upload, FTP or manual upload.

Conditions for the Merchant Center

In the Google Shopping Conditions it states, among other things, that you have to ensure that all URLs to your website work and that they have to be direct URLs. The product availability must be indicated and if the product is no longer available, that must be stated, or you have to remove the product from the feed or set the quantity must to “0″. Furthermore, the products must have fixed prices and there are also conditions on the content which you present to the visitor.

Google Shopping in Organic Search Results

An advantage and a disadvantage of Google Shopping is that Google Shopping results can also be seen in the “organic” search results from Google. That is, when people “regularly” search in Google for a product, results from Google Shopping can also be returned (just as images and videos are returned in the search results). This can be an advantage for suppliers who otherwise wouldn’t appear on the first page. At the same time, this is a disadvantage for websites which were on the first page and now get a lower (visual) position  because the product results push the regular results downwards.

Tough on affiliates

Affiliates are not permitted to use Google Shopping. Only companies who supply directly may forward their product feeds to Google.

Product Ad Listing for Google AdWords

Finally Bijgespijkerd noticed that eventually in the Netherlands it will also be possible to connect Google Shopping to Google AdWords, so that your products can also be shown in your AdWords advertisements. To do this, you can create text advertisements for your products or advertisements with images attached. This can be done by selecting the option “extend my ads with relevant product details from Google Merchant Center” in AdWords. Watch the video for more information on this:

Just like Sitelinks, the extension with your product listings provides could lead to a higher conversion rate. The advertisement is also shown when somebody looks for a specific product that you also have in your range.

Finally

Price comparison sites will not be happy about the arrival of Google Shopping and some companies which score well in the organic “search results” may be negatively affected by Google Shopping. Other companies may be given a further boost and the visibility of your products may be increased enormously. Time will tell, but price comparison is now getting easier and can even play a greater part in the online purchasing of products. Also, the competition may increase. Linking with AdWords may give advertisers a higher conversion rate, because the ads are even more attractive and provide for even better match with the users’ search query. The disadvantage could be that advertising via AdWords just got a little more complex.

To sum it up: Google Shopping may just shake things up in the online shopping landscape in the Netherlands. From a consumers’ perspective it seems that Goolge Shopping will prove to be a useful place for finding the best (or cheapest) place to order your product.

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