Social Media & SEO Summary January 2012

Posted by Hayden Allen-Vercoe on February 02 2012
Filed in Blog Network News, Online Marketing Tips and Advice, Online PR, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Analytics, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Research, Social Networking

What a month! Dominated by the launch of Google ‘Search plus your world’ (and the other Social Network’s discontent of this Google – centric search), and the SOPA Blackout, with the big guns in full support.

Here’s what happened in January 2012 in the world of Social Media and SEO.

SEO Summary January 2012

* Google’s social search, incorporating G+ in its search results, are discussed by Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land.

* Mashable’s Sarah Kessler comments it is too much, too soon – I agree.

* Erin Everhart, also from Mashable, comments on the SEO perspective of this new Social based search

This could all kick off - The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), has called for the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to investigate the recent search changes. There are concerns that the new features favour Google’s own services over those of competitors.

CNN Money even reported that Google may be sued for the new ‘Search plus your world’.

We need to remember that, according to Google, facebook & Twitter did not want Google to crawl their content, if this had been agreed search plus your world would have been so much more relevant.

And as far as SEO goes, I think it is important to highlight these personalised results are only visible if you are logged into Google. With G+ gaining more ground daily (see below!), more people are likely to be logged in to Google – which may become an SEO issue for the future.

But….Google said facebook and Twitter did not allow access to their social graphs and that’s why Search plus your world results are steered towards purely Google listings.

By the looks of it, not true. Engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have got together and produced a tool that shows clearly that Google’s new search could have been more driven to the user and not to Google. The new bookmarklet tool, ‘Don’t Be Evil’ goes beyond G+ search results. Search Engine Land have a full write up and install instructions.

Social Search as it should have been?

Meanwhile….

* WebProNews led with Google’s stunning announcement Larry Page claimed whilst discussing their results for the 2011 fiscal year; “Google had a really strong quarter ending a great year. Full year revenue was up 29%, and our quarterly revenue blew past the $10 billion mark for the first time. I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago.”

This was posted by WebProNews on 19th Jan. To really see how fast this Social Network is growing, the same site also revealed that G+ users have now reached an estimated 100 million users. That’s an extra 10% growth in less than 2 weeks. Is Mr Zuckerberg concerned? I know I would be, G+ now looks to be a really viable contender to facebook.

* It’s not all good for Google though. Concerns over the new privacy settings may seem searchers adopt a new approach. Microsoft capitalized on this with a blog post ‘Google doesn’t put people first’. Google responded to these claims in their own blog post.

* The huge internet campaign led by the big players saw sites blacking out sections of their pages (or even complete sites) in support of anti SOPA. Examples of Google, Wikipedia and others during the ‘SOPA Blackout’ can be found here.

Not sure what all the fuss is about? You need to know – it affects each and every one of us. Mashable cover why SOPA is dangerous very effectively. Scary reading.

But, the blackouts seem to have worked! (For now). Mashable report on Lamar Smith, the chief sponsor of SOPA, pulling the bill. SOPA is dead.

Social Media Summary January 2012

* Social Media Examiner mentions Google’s new social integration, as well as highlighting Twitters new embeddable tweets and a really interesting, useful and free email tool for Gmail users – Brand My Mail, where you can add blog posts, Twitter or facebook updates and much more to your emails.

* Hubspot’s Pamela Vaughan also talks about Google’s “biggest social search update yet”.

* Bharati Ahuja discusses Google+ “as a complete blogging platform” at WebPro Tech.

* Brian Solis shares 10 social media strategies for defining a successful 2012 at his blog.

* Pinterest continues to grow, with Etsy being the latest to add a pin it button.

* More social growth? Danny Goodwin of Search Engine Watch  reports that YouTube is now serving 4 billion videos a day. If you are a stat freak, click the link, there are some more YouTube related stats there!

* Pen.io continues to grow as the fastest online content publisher. Although basic, it is also very effective at publishing a web page online quickly. We like.

* Too many Social Networks to handle?!! Macworld report that Twitter have acquired social media feed condenser Summify. Summify summarizes Social content in people’s Google, Facebook and Twitter social media feeds and delivers a daily summarized version via email, a website or an iPhone.

* Google were not the only ones to reveal good financial results for 2011. Facebook has just filed its IPO for 2011 with a figure of $3.71 Billion.

So in the first month of 2012, although Google has reported huge success, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft have all expressed some negative views. This year is going to be interesting, with a few more scraps to come.

I cannot wait!