Tag: Google

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Google Introduces Local Guides – Enlisting Readers to Review You

Want to become a Local Guide too? You can.
Want to become a Local Guide too? You can.

Quietly in February Google rolled out a new program called Local Guides.  Not only did Google create a program to make a community out of people already active in their social space, but is providing perks, mentoring, and recognition for those that participate by writing reviews.

The benefit to Google is that it gets huge numbers of local business-specific, high quality reviews written by real people who have actually used the service or bought from the business. By creating its own reviewer network, Google builds a community that it can manage to boost what it wants to enhance its own relevancy in the local space. And it can use the reviews the way it wants.

Here’s one example of how Google is benefiting. Google asked all Local Guides to Level Up in March. By encouraging Local Guides that are Google+ Community Followers and offering personal encouragement, badges when you hit a certain number of reviews, and special recognition within its private global as well as local communities, it has crowdsourced business review writing in an incredibly smart and savvy way. I for one, boosted my review numbers to hit 50 – leveling up.

If you write 50 reviews and you get a special badge that appears next to your own reviews. Write 200+ reviews and you may get invites to special events, and even an occasional Google branded gift. Plus you get bragging rights.

As a Local Guide myself, I actually like the program and am using it as a way to share my local knowledge as well as to connect with other writers in my own community. I happen to think that this was an incredibly smart move on Google’s part to enlist a grassroots movement building it’s own review network that it will be able to use for AdWords and for its own search results needs.

There is cache associated with being a Local Guide and for now I am having fun with the program. If you are over 18, you can apply to be a Local Guide too. Just visit this page.

Remember Local Guides are not hired or paid by Google, nor are they Google employees. They are just helping to write about what they know and letting Google have the rights to their work.

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April 21 – Will Your Website Traffic Drop by Over 50%?

Google Partner Badge
McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

Google has announced that on April 21, it will be removing non-mobile friendly websites from the mobile search index. April 21st is the day you will find out just how much your website traffic will drop if you have not moved to a responsive website.

For some sites, mobile traffic accounts for over 50% of their online traffic. Are you ready to not have access to those potential customers?  Ready to have your website traffic drop by 30% or even 50%?

If you are not up to speed on these very important announcements here are two notifications you should read:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html

http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/opinion/2397938/google-confirms-intentions-for-mobile-search-what-now#

The bottom-line to these announcements are that although Google has been saying for over six months that mobile was important. Now they are saying it is REALLY important and if you are not embracing the mobile experience they simply do not want to show your website to their search customers. In essence by not going “mobile” you are making your website irrelevant with an expiration date of April 21, 2015!

No business owner wants to hear that their traffic may drop, but on April 21st you will know if mobile is a big factor in your own website traffic. If you aren’t sure what your mobile traffic patterns are, now’s the time to go to Google Analytics and check to see what the real numbers are so you can prepare.

For those that have moved to DudaMobile as a short term bandaid for a mobile site, we are already starting to get notices that Google is dinging these sites as well so what we thought would be a quick fix for some is turning out to maybe not the perfect short term solution.

Time is running out for sites that have not chosen to upgrade. You’ve got 44 days left to be responsively designed.

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Google Starts to Warn Website Owners on Mobile Viewing Issues

Google Notice on Mobile
You do not want to get this email from Google!

You do not want to get email from Google – really!  Just this week Google started posting in the Webmaster Control Panel and emailing website owners notifications like this one.

“Google systems have tested 25 pages from your site and found that 96% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these 24 pages severely affect how mobile users are able to experience your website. These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.”

Seeing as this site has only 25 pages, that means that Google is in essence saying “you’ve got big problems!”

Earlier in the year, Google warned that they would be evaluating websites for mobile friendliness and they also stated that this notification such as this one in this blog post would be the first step. The second step, Google stated,  would be to mark the site in the Google mobile search index as not viewable on a mobile phone.  Yikes, that sounds like a soft penalty.

Google also alluded to a third step which to many webmasters such as myself appears to be a organic penalty. Although Google may be slow to take this last action, they are clearly working their plan starting just this past week.

Many legacy websites are simply not responsive designed and are not mobile friendly. The site that received this notification is over 8 years old. If your site was not built in the last two years, expect to be getting notification of problems too.

I invite you to review our prices and programs to help you move your legacy website to a responsive site that Google will love. Find out more today.

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My Predictions for the Web for 2015

New-York-New-Year-2014[1]
Nancy McCord’s 2015 Predictions
It’s getting close to the end of the year and I’m getting the jump on the rest with my predictions for what we will see in 2015 on the Web. Here’s what I see as important for my industry and for business owners to take notice of.

1. The Mobile Web and Google
This whole next year expect to see more activity from Google in regards to refining how websites are ranked based on mobile friendliness. If you at the minimum do not have a DudaMobile website to turn you not so friendly mobile site into one that Google will like, now’s the time to make that move. Better yet is to invest in rebuilding your website using a responsive design which will serve you better in the long run.

2. Mobile Pay Will Be Hot
As all merchants will need to upgrade their swipe terminals to accept the new SIM card personal identifier in credit cards, Brian Shea of Seven Sages and I predict that nearly all merchants will move to the contactless pay terminals allowing greater use of mobile payments with Apple Pay and Softcard. I really like Mobile Pay and predict that this will really change our world in 2015 and 2016. Thanks Brian for the tip on terminals.

3. Organic Listings Will be Pushed Below the Fold on Google.com
Google is continuing to try to keep visitors on their site even longer with the Knowledge Graph and the Carousel. I expect to see Google continue to add even more location specific content on the Google.com page pushing true organic listings even lower on the page and these may actually be pushed below the fold. This will drive more businesses into Google AdWords for visibility. As the lines are blurred even further between paid ads and unpaid listings I expect to see strong growth in Google’s income as more businesses vie for the limited ad spaces.

4. Facebook Will Be in Direct Search Competition With Google
I don’t expect to see this in early 2015, but I would expect to see Facebook launch its own search engine by the end of 2015. I expect to see it branded with personal reviews and friend’s activity, making it a powerful competitor to Google. I am expecting to see developments in this area by late 2015 and early 2016. I feel that Facebook is looking to be more than a social news site and looking to go head to head with Google AdWords but in a unique creative way that will cause huge issues for Google’s market share.

5. Twitter Will Try to Become “Facebook”
In 2015 I expect Twitter to continue to try to attract more readers onto their home page and may actually drop the ability for so many third party apps to post content. I expect to see Twitter try to control scheduling of posts by either creating their own posting scheduling app or selecting only approved vendors. Twitter is looking to innovate and to stay vital, it will need to work to re-invent itself new technology in 2015 or start to lose market share.

Those are my top five predictions for 2015. Do you have any of your own you want to share, just leave them in comments.