Announced today on Google Labs there is a new tool called Google Follow Finder. It is based on Twitter’s @anywhere platform and it helps you find new followers that are best suited for your account.

I was going to do a nice comparison of Google’s Follow Finder and Mr. Tweet for you guys but neither of the products were working! (At least we are all use to Twitter related errors by now.)

The Google Follow Finder did do a nice job grouping up similar twitter accounts that have many of the same followers. Also I like the fact I can easily enter other people’s twitter accounts and get recommendations off their list. This is a great little method for pushing your way into a niche from someone who is already established. However the functionality of actually following those people through their browser was broken!

I generally love Google’s products, but for now this service is still very much in beta and I wouldn’t recommend it as a tool to ad to your arsenal. Hopefully in the future they can do some amazing things with it but for now it’s still very buggy and not nearly as good as Mr. Tweet.

Google's new website in an attempt to take control of Twitter Searches

Follow Finder Error Message

Mr. Tweet wasn't working and displayed this Error Message

Michael Roberts

Well that video was interesting! Yeah I am aware that I am a total dork! Was also very difficult putting on and off the coat and glasses. *pant pant*

So Google Buzz isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. There has been some big privacy concerns with the Buzz. When you sign up for Buzz it automatically has you start following the people you Gchat and Email alot. This is really quite a nightmare for alot of people. I absoltuely hate it how Freelancers I email all the time now have me on Google Buzz. They are constantly trying to use that as the platform to communicate. Yuck! :P

In fact people have been so upset about this privacy violation that there is even a class action law suit filed against Google. (Yay another useless lawsuit filed against the successful to raise insurance costs!) If you care to read more about that story you can visit here: Class Action Lawsuit Against Google

Don’t get me wrong I do agree that Google has made some terrible decisions with rolling out with Buzz…I also think it is very important to keep a close watch on what clausal companies like Google do who have already so much power….But really does this deserve a Class Action Lawsuit?

Weather it’s negative or positive Google Buzz has been getting an enormous volume of press all across the tech industry! This is almost as much fun to talk about as when twitter first came out! Weeee! However it really is a good service. I wouldn’t go as far as some people are and calling it a Facebook killer! Facebook will do a good job killing themselves if they go through with the decision to start charging people money to use their service in June or July or whatever date it has been moved to.

There definitely is some very good SEO potential though to be taken advantage of with Buzz, and as promised here are some more tips from me about Buzz that wasn’t used in the video.

1) Indexing and Backlinks. Google shot themselves in the foot once before by not allowing “No Follow Links” in the past. This time when they came out with Buzz though they made a smart decision and made them all “Do Follow Links”. This is fantastic news. Buzz doesn’t even shorten your URL’s. So anytime you come out with a new blog post, video, article, etc. Post a shameless plug about that new URL right on Buzz. This is a fantastic way to get the new content indexed and a free lil backlink! :)

2) Stealing is Wrong! but maybe not anymore!?!?! Ok so everyone knows duplicate content is a BIG NO NO. However, when the person who writes the rule book, Google, I guess they then have the right to change the rules when they see fit. With Google Buzz you can actually repost an entire blog post through Google Reader. You can sync your Google reader account right with Buzz which makes this lil trick possible. This basically allows you to share/steal content and get the green light from Mr. G.

3) As mentioned in the video you can use a third party site called Buzzzy in order to search latest trends on Google. This is a great way to add another little tool to your keyword research bag. Here is the link to this nice service: http://buzzzy.com/

4) Remember who your Buzz audience is. It’s important to keep in mind the context in which people will be looking at your posts on Buzz. Buzz is built right into people’s gmail accounts. What does this mean? It means 80% of the time when someone is checking in on Buzz it is between looking at emails. They are looking for a break from going through dozens of affiliate offers, people wanting their money, viagra ads and issues. I don’t know about you but going through my email often feels like a chore. After a few dozen emails I pop into my Buzz account and look for a brief escape. So keep your posts fairly short and try to dumb down the blatant sales pitches. You don’t want to have your Buzz account to be just another form of mass marketing like an email campaign. Keep it lighter and more chatty. Somewhere in between twitter and an email blast.

5) Post really controversial or comment worthy posts on Buzz. Buzz manages conversations in a more preferable way to me….it’s not like twitter where you have to spam a link over and over at different times of the day to try and reach your whole list. Soon as you post a twitter message with in mere minutes or seconds it is off the persons screen. Drowned out by dozens of other little tweets. With Buzz it will be the same way, but if someone comments or likes your post then it will re-surface to the top! How great is that? Content that is actually worthy will stay at the top!? So what this means to you is to engage your audience. People are already in a writing/comment mood because they just popped out of their email account….Now take advantage of that and ask them a question in your post or write something controversial, etc.

Ok that is it for Google Buzz.

Sorry the News video will be late this week. Will shoot it on Friday but it won’t come out probably till Monday. I am hoping to get on a normal filming schedule very soon! :)

And remember if you got some bit of useful information out of this rate the video 5 stars, subscribe to my YouTube channel or subscribe to the website! (If you don’t I will sue Google!)

Michael R Roberts

- Asynchronous calls – Instead of waiting for each and every call to complete when you make API requests, developers can now just receive an acknowledgement that their call has been received and then they can proceed to make another call. This way large requests that operate on large data sets become faster and easier to handle. The previous support for Synchronous calls will be continued as well.

- Location Extensions preview – The full functionality of the location extensions concept is under development but a preview of the full functionality is available in this release of the AdWords API.

- Keyword and placement ideas – A new TargetingIdeaService has been made available, so developers can get keyword and placement ideas through the API, thereby leveraging the functionality of the search-based keyword tool.

A complete list of all the new features is available in the release notes. [http://code.google.com/apis/adwords/v2009/docs/releasenotes.html]. Google says that in the near future, new features and additional AdWords functionality will be introduced. Some of the planned new features are ReportService, AccountService and the ability to do error checking.

Google encourages developers to start migrating systems to the v2009 API because v2009 introduces new features and concepts. The sunset period for deprecated services has also been extended to a period of 6 months.

So if you are using the Google AdWords API for a custom-coded application that interfaces with this API, now might be a good time to crank up the available docs and update what has been changed by Google.

I know, pretty techy blog post for today!  But hey every once in awhile even I have to get serious!  ;P

Michael R Roberts

Usually non-technical website maintenance people are the ones who use Google webmaster tools to keep a tab on their sites.  People wound up obsessing over their PR and often times with any dip in PR they would panic and contact Google.

Now that Google has removed the display of PageRank value in Google Webmaster Tools, this kind of scenario is far less likely to happen.

Some years ago Google reportedly had plans of removing PageRank information from the Google toolbar also, but this never happened due to the widespread use of google toolbar as a tool for determining page rank of websites.

This move by Google may have the effect of reducing the number of people trying to manipulate their rankings by buying and selling links on high PR pages and websites. Google seems to be subtly telling that the scoring algorithm that is called Pagerank is something that should not be worried about by webmasters, and that they should rather concentrate on the business of providing landing-worthy content.

So my advice to people is stop fretting about every little bump in the road or every itty bitty backlink.  I always just try to produce quality content.  If you build worthwhile material alot of the other elements will fall into line.  So focus on content and then just keep a slow steady build up of backlinks and other web 2.0 properties, but never fret if you hit a snag these are often times temporary and are nothing to worry about!

Michael R Roberts

Here’s a quick explanation of how to improve your Quality Score with the big guy “Google”.

(Oh and I will be doing a video talking about the new changes to their algorithms.  I will try to shoot the video this weekend.)

The Google adwords blog mentions some of the factors that are used by the Google scoring algorithm while calculating the Adwords Quality Score. These are as follows.

- Click through rate of the keyword and the corresponding ad

- Landing page quality (this could be a biased measure)

- Account history

- Keyword/Ad Group relevance

An advertiser using adwords then has one overwhelming question before his eyes: How do I improve my quality score? The answer is mainly the CTR (click through rate).

Empirical observations, (fancy word eh?),  made from available data show that quality score progresses linearly in the same lines as click through rate does. From observations, the quality scores of 8 and 9 seem to be rare “transition” regions. Until the quality score of 7, the correlation between quality score and click through rate seems to be better visible (as a linear progression).

Those seeking to improve their quality score should first seek to improve CTRs. This is supposed to have the biggest impact on the quality scores. (as observed from experience).

How to improve the CTRs of adwords ads?

- Improving ad copy:

By writing clear ad copy

- By inviting the attention of the surfer to the ad through appealing ad copy (wordings)

- Improving ad placement:

Choose target keywords carefully so your ads can appear in just the right places and not ‘anywhere’.

- Choosing keywords carefully:

- Avoid using very general keywords, these are the ones that are likely to have too much competition. (e.g., flowers)

- Use targeted long-tail keywords which have higher chance of click through by being relevant to the surfer (e.g., peonies in San Francisco)

- Better grouping and management of ad groups:

- Group related keywords into ad groups so they become easier to manage.

- Create targeted ads that apply to all the keywords in that ad group.

These are observations I have made in my many many adword campaigns I have run in the past 12 months.  It is a brie explination and was something I wanted to get off my chest.  If you guys show a real interest I can dive into further detail in the future.

Hope that helps! ;)

Michael R Roberts