Getting Granular: The DigitalGrit Blog

Google Loses Out on Facebook and Goes Maka-Maka

TechCrunch is reporting today that although Google may have lost its bid on Facebook, all is not lost to them in Social Media.

Maka-Maka is Goog's answer to going social:

Maka-Maka encompasses Google’s grand plan to build a social layer across all of its applications. Some details about Maka-Maka have already leaked out, particularly how Google plans to use the feed engine that powers Google Reader (known internally as Reactor) to create “activity streams” for other applications akin to Facebook’s news and mini feeds. But Maka-Maka goes well beyond that.

Maka-Maka will be unveiled in stages. The first peek will come in early November. As we reported previously, Google is planning to “out open” Facebook with a new set of APIs that developers can use to build apps for its social network Orkut, iGoogle, and eventually other applications as well.

Aw, Jeez. Another social network. That's all I need. As if I'm not burned out enough from Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pownce, and every other social site I've joined in the last few years...Will Google's offering out-do all the above, enticing me to abandon every other community?

Microsoft Wins Facebook Deal

Facebook's been the belle of the ball since this spring, when it opened its virtual doors to one and all. Surpassing MySpace in growth, Facebook has been the subject of rumours for months, since Google and Microsoft have been vying for the social media mammoth's affections.

Looks like Microsoft has scored the deal, announcing a $240 million dollar investment yesterday. Microsoft will buy a 1.6% stake in Facebook, an optimistic bet on the future of social media.

Takin' SEO to the Streets: How communication can lead to mainstream discovery

Every morning, I engage in a rather systematic review of SEO industry sites, scouring the scene for new insights and observations that will help me improve my craft. Two of my favorites are Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land. Both of these portals are recognized as industry leaders in terms of both reach and influence.

So imagine my surprise when I woke up last Friday and noticed that a conversation between myself and Tristan Panasik, Manager of New Media here at DigitalGrit, made it onto the homepage of these two search engine industry giants.

How did this happen? Well that depends on your perspective.

For weeks, Tristan’s team and myself have been discussing the merits of Yahoo’s Site Explorer feature. We all agreed that it offered the most comprehensive data on a given site’s inbound links (if you have a Google Webmaster Tools account you can get even more complete and accurate data for a verified domain, but that’s a story for another day) but on Thursday afternoon, it appeared as if Tristan had stumbled upon a possible fly in the ointment.

She pointed out that members of her team were getting two wildly disparate sets of results when pulling backlink data for a specific client. After digging around for a possible cause, and finding next to nothing, I decided to go to one of my other favorite SEO hangouts, webmasterworld.com.

Most discerning webmasters know that if you’re looking for highly specialized and comprehensive information on a very specific topic, one of the first places you should turn to is WebmasterWorld. So anyhow, I posted a thread about this possible Yahoo Site Explorer discrepancy, and sure enough, esteemed member “Lord Majestic” came back with a lucid response within minutes of my initial post. It turns out that Yahoo chooses to serve a more complete sampling of data to users that are logged in to their Yahoo profiles.

Apparently, the powers that be at WebmasterWorld felt that this discussion was worthy of note, so they flagged it as an item of interest, and by morning, it had already begun making the rounds.

So that’s one way of looking at how this discrepancy became an item of public record. But here’s another.

Here at DigitalGrit, we try to foster a climate of community and interaction amongst the various departments. Tristan’s willingness to share her team’s insights with others is the reason why this topic made it onto WebmasterWorld, who in turn helped make it a public discussion, and it is a perfect example of why communication is a fundamental aspect of SEO.

Nobody knows everything there is to know, so the only way to expand your horizons is to ask questions and pass ideas along.

White on White Text Equals Black Hat SEO

When the search engines were not as sophisticated as they are now, you could stuff all your keywords in the Keywords Meta Tag and you would get first page rankings overnight. That was then.

Times have changed. If you've been doing SEO for a while, you know not to try to fool the search engines or else you could end of getting your site banned. It’s easy to forget that most of our clients don’t know White Hat from Black Hat.

Why you shouldn’t listen to Aaron Wall

Believe it or not, this is not an article bashing the creator of SEO Book. I regularly read his blog posts and hold both his knowledge and insight with high regard.

Still, something about the way he chooses to deliver his assertions just rubs me the wrong way, and I think I can put my finger on it by sampling some of his most recent bylines:

Google is Wikipedia, but Worse

The Real Problem With Half Truths & Hand Editing (same post as previous headline)

How Relevancy is Defined
·    Money to Google = relevant, good user experience

Is it just me, or does it seem like Mr. Wall goes out of his way to paint a bleak and ominous image of the world’s largest search engine? These headlines are just a small sampling, but SEO Book is filled with similarly inflammatory assertions.

Granted, Aaron will occasionally give credit to the mega search engine, like on one of his latest posts stating that, “Google makes communication faster and cheaper, advertising more relevant and trackable, and audience aggregation more efficient. They also create a lot of cool tools that evolve the web which allow publishers to layer value over the top of them.” Unfortunately, his monologue almost always turns into a Google conspiracy/bashing session.

To his credit, SEO Book has maintained that angle since day one, but as Wall’s popularity has grown, so has his influence over less experienced and discerning webmasters. Therefore, in my opinion, he is helping to mislead many SEO newbies into the false impression that Google is out to purposely screw them.

The reality is that, like all corporations, Google is out to make a profit. Therefore, they will take any steps that they deem necessary to maintain their position as the world’s most effective means of finding information on the internet. That’s why other search engines like MSN and Ask have spent countless dollars on television ad campaigns, Google chooses to dump the vast majority of their resources into further developing their internal infrastructure. They know that if their search engine continues to be the cream of the crop, the average user will continue to use them, and they in term will continue to make boatloads of cash.

Sadly, Wall misinterprets that motivation, thinking that Google, which is a multi-level organization with a complex set of goals and strategies, is singularly focused on the fortunes and misfortunes of individual SEOs.

Frankly, Google could care less about the fortunes and misfortunes of SEO folks. They just care about having the best search engine. Yes, they have serious issues to content with, like the surprising amount of redirect/affiliate spam infiltrating search results, their Vietnam-like losing battle against paid links, and other assorted issues, but when one takes a moment to step back and appreciate the shear size and reach of Google’s search engine it becomes strikingly apparent that the search engine giant will always face an uphill battle in this regard.

Again, I’m not advocating that you stop reading Aaron Wall’s posts. He actually provides some of the most data-rich and insightful SEO (and general business) insights on the net, and some of his criticisms of Google are just. I’m just cautioning the burgeoning SEO webmaster from “listening” to his anti-Google rhetoric and taking it to heart, because I’ve found that bitterness seldom lends itself to success.

P.S. Just for kicks, I wanted to point out that I love hanging out at the Hudson Hotel. It's the one of the best New York Hotels out there.

Basic PageRank misconceptions

Posts relating to Google PageRank data are a dime a dozen. Well all know that.

However, it’s disturbing to see some of the more reputable voices in the industry misunderstanding some of the basic tenets surrounding Google’s little green bar.

For example, a recent post at Search Engine Roundtable referencing Google’s most recent directory PageRank update failed to recognize that the reason for discrepancies between the PR shown in the Google Directory and the PR shown in the Google Toolbar is that directory PR works on an eight-point scale while Toolbar PR works on a 11-point scale.