For such a long time video itself has been considered outside the bounds of search engine optimization, but now Google is attempting to break through this ceiling.

This presents an entire new landscape of opportunities for search engine marketers.
Get the entire scoop straight from Google.

Actually, I jk about the Pokemon inspiration, but in all honesty, the Google Chrome logo is taken from an open source browser project called “Chromium”.  It even says on the Chromium website, “Google Chrome is built with open source code from Chromium.”

Now Google took more then just Chromium’s source code, they snagged their logo as well. They just added their wack Google colors. Below is Chromium’s logo.

Chromium

A few weeks ago my fiance wanted help remembering to do a task at a certain time each day. I told her I’d send her a text message to remind her. However, now the responsiblity of remembering fell on me. So I searched the web for a service to setup text message reminders. Well, I found a few free ones, but none of them were very good. So I decided to put on my programming hat and build my own.

After a week of building the core functionality, I decided to add in some social media features - friends, status updates, direct messaging, etc. With that new social media face in mind, I wanted to choose a domain that was fun and catch. However, at the same time I wanted a domain that had some keywords in there for linking building ease.

My result is this. I registered the domain www.textreminders.net. I figured that having the words “text” and “reminders” was probably a good thing for link building. But I didn’t like the fact that it wasn’t .com and it wasn’t very catchy or easy to remember. Then the thought occured to me, “What if I build link with this domain, then later on register a catch one and 301 this one!”And there is my strategy. Register 1 or 2 .net, .info, .edu, or .us domains with nice keywords and build your incoming links to those domains. Then down the road redirect them to your branded vanity domain.

In theory it should work well. However it’ll be a few weeks before my own test results come in.

Enjoy.

So, have we reached a day where full flash web sites and html sites can be ranked equally? Probably not. But what happens if we throw some major link love towards the flash sites?

Test:
1. Create two similar files - one flash, one html.
2. Optimize both for a non-existent search term “sirchingine“.
3. Link to both through this post using the anchor text “sirchingine“.
4. Track which file ranks better for the search term - I hypothesize the HTML file will.
5. Add additional backlinks to flash file - monitor change in rankings.

What can we learn?
My hope is to show that full flash web pages can indeed outrank well optimized HTML pages if enough backlinks fuel the flash page.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Google Knols is an online, collaborative authoriship platform (much like Wikipedia), but with a social side. The idea is to encourage people to write authoriative articles about topics they know about, while the Knols community comments, rates, reviews and in come cases, adds to the article.

The Difference Between Knolls and Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is setup like an encyclopedia. The content is trustworth, and tries to rely on facts - not opinions or viewpoints. Google Knols is exactly the opposite. Knols encourages multiple articles on the same topic, and embraces different viewpoints and opinions. Therefore the structure of these two web sites is remarkably different. Wikipedia collects and consolidates the authority of the information under one topic. Knols spreads the authority of the topic across multiple authors and viewpoints.

Having the authority linked to the author presents a very different way of moderating information. Wikipedia moderates their information by having volunteers adjust posts, ban users and ultimately keep the place clean. Knols however gives that responsibility to the authors, allowing them to approve or disprove additions or edits to their posts. This method of administration means that Knols is going to have some very high quality articles, and some very low quality articles.

“The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.”

The saving grace for Knols is that the community will ultimately push the higher quality articles to the top - establishing creditability for the author. Authors with high established creditability will have an easier time getting their new articles to the top of the results, while low creditability and new authors will have a difficult time getting their articles found.

From a search engine optimization view, Google Knols presents some very interesting possibilities. First off, Google has stated that Knols will be search able from their search engine:

“Yes, you can search on Google or other search engines to find knols, like any other web pages.”

So either Knols will appear in the universal search area on top of the natural results, or it will show up very high in the natural results. Either way, we’re likely to see Wikipedia and Knols take the top 2 places for many, many search terms.

The Positive!
Knols can be used to drive traffic to your site! The idea is to have the Knol you’ve written appear in the top spot in Google. Lets listen to what Google says about Knols searchability:

“Knols are indexed in search engines like any other website. Search engines will generally give more importance to your knol title and subtitle, so try to choose a relevant and descriptive title and sub-title.”

Once your Knol starts receiving traffic, you can funnel that over to your web site by including links in your article. Now these links are no followed: “<meta name=“robots” content=“index,nofollow” />” so don’t expect to see your sites ranking improve because of them, but they can provide some valuable visitors in their own right.

More to come.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Keywords and placements — together!

• As of today, both keywords and placements can be targeted in all AdWords campaigns. Use both to get better control and pricing power on the content network.What can you do with keywords plus placements?
  • Bid more or less for specific placements. Let contextual targeting with keywords place your ads across the content network, while you set placement bids for sites that have a special value for you.Selling soccer shoes? You might bid $1.00 for clicks from any content network pages that match your keywords, but $2.00 when those clicks come from a soccer fan site that’s converted well for you in the past.
  • Show your ad only when both keywords and placements match. You’ll get the benefits of keyword targeting while also limiting the places where your ad can appear.For instance, set your campaign to appear only on your favorite soccer fan site, and only when the site content matches the keyword soccer shoes. You may see less traffic, but AdWords contextual matching will help make sure your placement pages are highly targeted.

  Placements are always optional. They’re an advanced feature with no impact on your search network advertising. You can add keywords or placements to existing ad groups, or you can leave those campaigns as they are and create new ones with keywords plus placements. Learn more

Search volume statistics in the Keyword Tool

• You can now see statistics on the approximate number of search queries matching your keywords. This data allows you to better plan your budget and pick keywords most likely to return quality leads, which in turn can help improve your ROI. Learn more

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

“Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we’ve improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe’s Flash Player technology.

In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find.

Now that we’ve launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can expect to see better search results and snippets. There’s more info on the Webmaster Central blog about the Searchable SWF integration.”

Now this revelation is something I already posted about back in may (see post), but I suspect the general public wasn’t catching on. So Google now makes an official announcement. I guess the days of “flash web sites can’t be crawled” are gone. I guess that’s a good thing. Now be prepared for spammy .SWF’s in the results pages for a while.

I’m seeing at least two major changes.

1) Universal Search meets Social Media
The idea of universal search (the inclusion of different forms of media to Google’s search engine results pages) will soon include product recommendations based on what your friends think of the product. For example, say you’re searching for “coffee pots”, and a friend on Facebook purchased a coffee pot recently and wrote a review on telling how much they loved it. This review shows up in the SERPS with a little blurb like, “See what your friends had to say about ‘coffee pots’” and right there on the results page is your friends review.

2) Personalized Search will change.
Google is already tracking most peoples web history. It influences the way results are displayed for individuals based on past searching/surfing habits. Now image that your searching on a search term like, “king”… Google doesn’t know if you’re looking for a definition of the word, a list of past kings, the king of the jungle, “king of queens” television show, etc. Now if you’ve never searched for a term like this, Google can’t use your web history to help determine results. BUT what if Google knew who your friends were? What if Google could use social data to determine that you have 8 friends who are major Elvis lovers? Google would then assume that when you search for “king”, you might actually be looking for information about Elvis, and tailor your search results accordingly.

So there you have it. Two ways I predict social media will change the face of search results and in term search engine marketing.

I’ve been watching with concern as Google’ s Universal Search Results continues to bury the natural listings under paid listings, news clips, images, YouTube video’s, local listings, product listings, sitelinks, internal site search and now today I find yet another “feature” sneak out into the wild - A variation of the Local Listings - a “Local Search Form”.

Exhibit A) - A search for “web designers”

Exhibit B) - Let’s take a closer look

As Google continues to change up the search experience, we as search marketers are forced to change the way we think about site optimization. It’s no longer a keywords & links game. Today’s search marketers need to understand the different channels (YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps, Google Base, News & Blogs) that now formulate the SERPS.

I realize that this information shouldn’t really surprise many people. Just another manifestation of universal search. So for those cutting edge marketers who felt like they just wasted 5 mins reading this post - here is an insight that absolutely nobody has talked about.

Write this down, because here comes a nugget of wisdom that you can actually speak about at conferences…
Google will be introducing Social Search into their search results in the near future.

I’m going to dedicate a seperate post to discussing what I actually mean by this, and how we can expect it to impact the industry. Stay tuned.

“We’re disappointed that Facebook disabled their users’ ability to use Friend Connect with their Facebook friends,” a Google spokesman told Wired.com.

Facebook is citing privacy concerns, but from what I understand it’s simply that Facebook doesn’t want to build the privacy controls into their API. Therefore Google has no way of meeting the privacy “standards” that Facebook requires.

Read the full story on Wired.