The German government announced this week a new bill that will ban employers from snooping on potential employees’ activities on Facebook and other social networking sites that are not specifically oriented towards professional networking. The bill also includes a measure that will prevent employers from secretly video taping their employees.

Google Devotes a Page to Real-Time Search

Google has devoted a new page of its search product to real-time search results, which index updates from Twitter and other social networks. Google has been paying Twitter for updates for almost a year now, but this is the first effort Google has made to specifically highlight real-time results.

Google Introduces Gmail Voice Calling

Google introduced its new Google Voice service this week, allowing users to ‘chat’ for free with other Gmail users. After its launch on Wednesday, Google tweeted that over a million calls were placed within the first 24 hours. To read more about Google’s new service and for a complete analysis of the motivations behind the new service, check out The Economic Times’ article “Google Opens New Line to Internet Phone Calls.”

New Netflix iPhone App

Netflix released a new app this week, making it possible for users to update their queues from their smartphones.

CollegeOnly Social Network

A new social media network has emerged behind the shadow of Facebook, CollegeOnly. CollegeOnly was designed by Josh Weinstein, the creator RandomDorm and GoodCrush, specifically for university students. In an interview “Facebook has changed — for the better — but its original use case is currently unserved, as college students are less likely to upload photos or post what they are up to with parents and potential employers looking on. As such, we realized that the opportunity to ‘connect student bodies’ wasn’t just romantic, but social.”

Blogs to check out:

Ad Auctions are Not Auctions

The Search Agents’ Bradd Libby has authored another insightful paid search article, which outlines the ways in which paid search auctions differ from typical auctions.

Google’s Nine Year Shopping Spree, Illustrated

Alexia Testosis authored a great article and graphic this week that charts the history of Google’s acquisitions over the last nine years.

Keep Facebook Places From Driving You Crazy

Feeling overwhelmed by the number of recent Facebook Places’ updates? Paul Boutin authored a blog, offering some helpful tips on how to navigate your way through Facebook’s new service.

Social networking giant Facebook reported another privacy glitch this week that caused a mix up in their messaging system. User’s private messages were sent to the wrong in-boxes, further irritating fear over the site’s security.

Yahoo and Twitter Team Up

Yahoo announced this week plans to team up with Twitter to provide real time search result into its search engine.  Unlike Google and Bing, Yahoo plans to limit the number of ‘tweets’ they index to two, but plans on coupling them with relevant YouTube links.

Yahoo Answers Gets a Makeover

Yahoo announced plans to overhaul the look and feel of Yahoo Answers. Most importantly, Yahoo plans on building a set of browsing categories, i.e. tabs, which will hopefully ease user navigation. To read more, check out Yahoo’s official statement.

Apple Cleans Up Its App Store

Apple caused quite a bit of commotion this week with their new efforts to clean up their iPhone app store. After numerous customer complaints, Apple removed  over 5,000 “overly sexual” apps their store last week. As Apple executive Phil Schiller explained in an interview with NYTimes this week, “It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see.”

While such arguments are valid, it seems that Apple has been a bit selective in terms of what ‘racy’ apps are allowed to stay and which have to go. Apps built by Time Warner, for example, like Playboy Enterprises and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit addition, haven’t been effected by Apple’s housecleaning. For more information and a detailed list of which apps survived the cut,  check out Rich Jaroslovsky’s article in Business Week.

Yelp Gets Suit over Disputed Review

A class-action lawsuit was filed against Yelp this week that alleges unfair business practices and claims that the online local review site has been running an “extortion scheme.” According to the New York Times the suit claims hat Yelp’s employees “call businesses demanding monthly payments, in the guise of ‘advertising contracts,’ in exchange for removing or modifying negative reviews appearing on the Web site.” This is not the first time Yelp has run into trouble for their lack of transparency and questionable poliicies regarding reviews and businesses.

Google Real Time Search to Include Facebook Status Updates

As part of their continuous efforts to improve their Real Time Search results, Google  began indexing Facebook fan pages this week. To read more, and for a complete description of Google’s current real search program, check out Danny Sullivan’s article on Search Engine Land.

Google Explains Search Rankings After Complaints in Europe

Google offered further insight into sites ranking system this week, exactly one day after the European Commission announced that it was investigating antitrust complaints against the search company.  In a blog post on the topic, entitled “This Stuff is Tough“, Amit Singhal writes frankly about the difficulties of ‘being Google,’ describing, in very witty terms, the challenges of answering the world’s questions.

While the concept of real-time search has been well covered in the SEO blogosphere since Twitter really took off in 2009, most of us assumed that the reality of real-time search was a bit further off.

In the article, I take a closer look into the mechanics of real-time search, and investigate how content on blogs, news and social media channels are evaluated by the major search engines. Drawing on this information and our understanding of SEO and social media best practices, I highlight the impact on traditional SEO strategy and offer a few tips for marketers to manage the content included in real-time search results.

What’s been your experience with real-time search?  As a consumer, has it improved your search experience and brought more “relevant” results?  As a marketer, does the inclusion of up-to-the minute news, tweets, and blog posts represent an effective marketing channel, or will it end up causing more harm than good and make proactive reputation management an even bigger imperative?  Take a look at the article and share your feedback.

Overall, I find him personable, entertaining and certainly honest. His honesty got him in hot water (and an unofficial slap on the wrist) last year when his offhand comments at SMX Advanced (Search Convention) in Seattle on page rank sculpting prompted some official “clarifications.”

As noted, and Matt if you’re reading this, I like you. So when I saw your video entitled “2010 Search Predictions” I thought “Right on, dude!”

2 minutes and 44 seconds later, I’m like “huh?”

Comprehensiveness, Relevance, Freshness, Speed – got it, Matt – not exactly Nostradamus, and the clarification on the difficulty of real time search, though interesting, is kind of a moot point after the initial launch algorithms of Google’s in-line ‘real-time results’ were shown to be seriously deficient in spam control. (It’s better or “more cautious” now.)

Matt then goes into his thoughts on the future of SEO.

A ‘fork in the road’, one side ethical “white hat” (or in The Search Agents case, “Orange Hat”) methods, and the other side what appears to be evil-doers focused on ”drive by wins!”

I’m not certain what the ulterior motives might be for spending the majority of the video talking about malware, server patches and site hacking, but that wasn’t my expectations of Google’s search guru predictions.

What about a little more on SERP interface changes, facing the challenge of Binghoo, real-time data sources, cataloging of media types, blended results‘ future and personalization of search ‘experience’?

IMHO the future of SEO 2010 is all about results’ targeting (including personal and geographical) that will create both challenges and opportunities.

Personally I believe 2010 is going to be a phenomenal year for SEO.

Matt, lets chat.

Deciphering the algorithm, or how Google actually selects what content to include within the “News Results” or “Latest Results” section is a topic for another post.  As a marketer, I’m equally interested in where Google is choosing to place the block of real-time results within the standard SERP.

When I first read about “Relevance Meets the Real-time Web”, I assumed that Google would blend the real-time results somewhere in the middle of the first page, just as they had with video results and local business results when appropriate.

But then I happened to search for [Goldman Sachs] after hearing about their CEO testifying in front of Congress. I was surprised to see what showed up at the top of the page:

I had taken it for granted that a search for [Goldman Sachs] would produce goldmansachs.com as the top result.  But with so much being written about the congressional testimony, Google must have presumed I was more interested in reading the latest news on Goldman Sachs than I was in reaching their official corporate web site.

I tested this with a few other companies and products (AOL, Toyota, Netflix) and  couldn’t replicate the result.  That was until I came across a story about a number of U.S. airlines raising the fees for checked luggage.  I ran a search for [United Airlines] and sure enough, Google had placed the news results at the top, and the fee increase was the lead story:

I wanted to see if top billing for news results would also be applied to specific brands (rather than companies).  And just to see how Google treats its own company news, I ran a search for [Nexus One] – Google’s recently-launched android smartphone.   Once again, Google has placed the “News Results” at the top of the page, but also included the “Latest Results” just below:

In addition to the more prominent placement of “Latest Results,” there was one other important difference between the [Nexus One] SERP and those of [United Airlines] and [Goldman Sachs]:

Google ran a paid search ad for Nexus One. United Airlines and Goldman Sachs did not.

There has been some debate in the search marketing world about the need to bid on your own brand terms.  On the one hand, you may end up paying for traffic that, in all likelihood, you would have captured with your organic listing.  On the other hand, bidding on your brand terms keeps your competitors from assuming the top position in the paid listing and gives you a vehicle to deliver timely messages and promotions.

Either way, most marketers had taken it for granted that with a decent amount of SEO effort, you should expect to see your own site listed as the top result for your brand keywords.

When I searched for these brands, UAL and Goldman had elected not to run PPC ads.  And with Google’s decision to lead with News Results, their official website was pushed down the page, below the negative headlines about their brand.  Google, on the other hand did include a sponsored result for Nexus One, and earned itself the top spot on the page, above the latest headlines and buzz.

If your company has any chance of becoming “newsworthy” and you believe it’s a good idea to have your web site show up #1 on a search for your brand term, bidding on your brand keywords has gone from being an accepted best practice to a virtual imperative.

Real-time search also heightens the importance of reputation management.  With the addition of tweets into the standard SERP, a search for [United Airlines] not only brings up Untied Airlines – a site dedicated to customer complaints about UAL and its customer service, but also a 140-character performance assessment from “tbutler” six minutes ago:

I recognize that United Airlines is an extreme example.  Virtually all the news about the airline industry is negative and even the most loyal of frequent flyers will rarely tweet anything close to:

“Just had an awesome flight on United Airlines. Thanks for the smooth landing and getting us to the gate 10 minutes early!”

But the lesson still applies.  Every business has to expect customer complaints and the backlash from public missteps.  Even the best customer service or PR effort cannot eliminate negative or slanderous messages about your brand.  By actively engaging in social media and taking a proactive approach to reputation management, a brand can reach something close to fair balance.

What’s most concerning is that real-time search brings the unvarnished truth from the outer reaches of the web (blogs, forums, the  twitter page of “tbutler”) to the first page of the Google search results.  And if these examples from United, Goldman, and Nexus One are any indication, the real-time results can even appear above the #1 organic search result.

Though you cannot control everything that’s written or tweeted about your brand, running a paid search campaign on your brand keywords at least gives you the power to control whose message appears at the top of the page.  And perhaps that’s exactly where this is going.  For many searches, the latest news stories or personal updates will in fact be the most relevant results.  So good for the user — they now have a far richer variety of information and sources from which to begin their navigation.   But what’s the impact to the marketer?  Apparently those in charge at United Airlines and Goldman Sachs had not thought it was necessary to bid on their own brand.   Maybe, like me, they had taken it for granted that the company site would always show up in first position.  Now these companies, and any others that are “in the news,” have no choice but to run a paid search campaign on their brand terms to secure their spot at the top of the page.

Query 1: “Christmas presents”

This was a great first query to try out – lots of happy people tweeting about their Christmas shopping.  Until a result streamed by with this in the title:  ” Destroyio Records Presents O.P.S., Johnny S** F***”.  My Google SafeSearch was set to “medium” (reject images, accept text), and “Christmas” was in the body of the result, so in a way, one could argue this is acceptable, but I doubt most people would ever expect to see something with s** f**** on the first page of a search for “Christmas presents” – from a relevancy standpoint.

Query 2: “Tiger Woods”

I dutifully reset my SafeSearch setting to “Strict” and searched on “Tiger Woods”.  And watched with amazement as inappropriate joke after inappropriate joke scrolled by; some with “$$” appearing to replace “ss”, allowing some pretty “unsafe” words to sail right by Google’s SafeSearch filter.  This definitely was not what I expected.

Then I Started Tweeting...

I only have about 35 or so followers, but I thought – hey – I’ll tweet something that has the words “Tiger Woods” in it and see if it shows up.  So I tweeted the following – and it came right up within seconds (some portions redacted here – remember, this was with SafeSearch set to “strict”):

It basically looks like, with a very low bar, almost anyone can say almost anything they want, as long as they use the target keyword in their post, and perhaps are creative about how they say it.  I used this example because Google had a run-in some years ago with CNET over a piece Elinor Mills wrote that included publicly available information on Eric Schmidt – now any schmoe can post anything about the guy and it shows right up on page 1 of a Google SERP?  That just doesn’t seem right.  Is the world really ready for part of Google’s first results pages for some terms to be the Wild West?

How they could easily improve this

Google has a simple tool they could be employing to start addressing this – Relevance.  A posting about “Christmas presents” that contains the word “Macy’s” for instance, is probably more relevant to a query about “Christmas presents” than one that has “s** f***”.  A posting about “Tiger Woods” and “Golf” (or “Scandal”) is probably more relevant to a “tiger woods” query than one about “Tiger Woods” and “Eric Schmidt”.   Google already has great technology for determining the relevance of short text snippets to documents – AdSense – and Google uses it to match ad text to target publisher’s web pages on their Content Network.

Why didn’t they modify this technology and apply it to this problem, comparing relevancy of tweets to SERPs for instance?  It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be far better than it currently is.   It feels rushed, and one can easily envision a wide variety of potential PR nightmares for Google.  Expect this feature to change rapidly, particularly since the time cycle for doing a test to see what gets you on page 1 of Google, for some terms, just went from 3 months to 30 seconds…it should make for an interesting arms race between spammers (and even more nefarious people) and Google in the coming weeks and months.

Facebook has just sent out the following information regarding Facebook Privacy Day:

• Our current privacy model revolves around networks, but some have grown so large that they’re no longer the best way for you to control your privacy.
• We’re removing regional networks completely and creating a simpler privacy model where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.
• We’re also introducing a new feature called Publisher Privacy Control, which gives you control over the privacy of every single thing you post, at the time you post it.
• Our goal is also to help users find and connect with each other, which goes to the heart of the Facebook experience. That’s why we’re taking a basic set information that almost everyone on Facebook today is already sharing with everyone and making it publicly available.
• No changes whatsoever to ads on Facebook. We do not give—and have never given—anyone’s data or personally identifiable information to advertisers.

However, let’s not get too attached to changes happening at Facebook. Back in June, Facebook added live search in their privacy setting updates. At the same time, Facebook allowed users to a fantastic level of control by allowing users to choose which list has permission to see each individual status update. This feature was promptly disabled, much to the dismay of the casual user as well as the business minded user.

SEO becomes more relevant in the social media space almost daily. Between these new privacy adjustments, real time search, and Bing’s deal with Facebook and Twitter, search and social media are becoming one inseparable entity. Today’s changes will ironically make it more likely that private information will be easier to search. As users may have the choice of making private information public, status updates may begin to appear in the SERPs (and more often in the SMERPs . This can be of great advantage to users establishing themselves as both a person and a brand. A Facebook profile with a vanity URL will almost always appear as one of the first results for the name used. What are the results when you Google your name (come on, we all do it)? As social media sites begin to take top positions in the SERPs, what will appear?

Microsoft wasted little time adding the tweets to their search results in a new feature they’ve dubbed “Bing Twitter.” Google has yet to announce how they will incorporate Twitter updates in their search results.

I asked some fellow Search Agents to consider the potential impact of these agreements on the industry, the companies involved, SEO best practices, and search behavior:

This is definitely a big step for Twitter towards validation as a long term play and not a short term fad.  It would also seem to be either a dangerous game for the search engines or acceptance of a reality that social media is only going to grow and that if they do not try to integrate then they are going to shed unique users and lose market share.

Rick Egan | Sr. Director, SEO & Social Media Services

An interesting approach Google may take would be to do something like Wave, where searches stream real-time results. Some Twitter clients’ search tools do this as well.

Carl A. Dunham| Chief Technology Officer

I’m curious to see how the engines are going to combat spam and libel.  Will be fun to watch.

George Gearhart | SEO Project Manager

This may end up reducing the number of clicks to paid search.   Ultimately, it should make Twitter more important, although likely not for anything commercial.

David Hughes | Chief Executive Officer

The Google vs. Bing fight is all about infrastructure and Ph.D’s (Ph.D’s actually are infrastructure, if they can come up with algorithms 5% more effective you can skip spending $1 Billion on that next datacenter).    If Bing can utilize Twitter and Facebook’s infrastructure and Ph.D’s to do some of the sifting for them, that’s a huge win – it’s a big web and this is all about coverage.  A loose federation of large-infrastructure companies, combined with massive capital subsidies from upcoming Windows 7 profits that could be used to build more Microsoft datacenters, just might be enough to give Bing a real fighting chance.

Ted Ives | VP, Product Management

It will be interesting to see how they implement this.  I wouldn’t expect a huge affect.  They don’t want to be posting 5 hour old Reuters and AP articles that Michael Jackson is in the hospital when people Tweeting at the scene have been saying he’s dead for the last 6 hours.  I think that it is more of a crushing blow to Newspapers and Old Media.

Bing reformatted their results to fit additional things.  Google seems intent on keeping their format.  So, they will probably just integrate 2 or 3 current Tweets where they would normally put links to news article.

However, they are opening themselves up to some dangerous territory.  I hope their Language, Slang, and Acronym Filters are up to date.

In Google’s vertical search integration (Universal Search), most of their results have some other weight behind them in order for them to rank.  In order to try to integrate ‘real time’ data, they will be putting results into their listings without really knowing what they say.  In an effort to scoop the news, there would be no verify step (e.g. trusted domain, good links, etc…).  It will be like customized license plates, Tweeters will be competing with each other to see what they can get past the filters and how effectively they can TweetBomb bogus stories into Google Results.

Otto | Chief Research Officer & EVP, Search Engine Optimization

1. Twitter realizes that while they’ve gone viral and sign-ups are through the roof, they’re ACTIVE user numbers are actually rather low.  Most “lay-people” are not very familiar with one of the powers of Twitter (i.e. real-time search), so this is a great play on Twitter’s part to widen their reach vis-à-vis the attachment that consumers have to Google (and to a far lesser extent , to Bing).  Folks who live under rocks and haven’t heard of Twitter, or folks who have heard of it but are not motivated to sign-up yet, will begin to see the value of Twitter as a part of their SERPs, this list also includes the non-active Twitter folk.

2. For our clients, the opportunity lies in having very active keyword-targeted Tweets which appropriately represent their brand and have tinyURLs within the visible text that the SEs index, so users can click from the SERPs directly to the link that our clients want users  to arrive at, thus skipping the Twitter page all-together.  Points 1 & 2 almost contradict each other, as far as benefits to Twitter, but if Twitter’s smart they’ll make sure their http://www.twitter.com is plainly visible to the user.

A. Waleed Rashid | Project Manager, SEO

I’m not 100% certain that Google or Bing fully understand the implications of indexing real-time search. Looking through my Twitter stream, I manually filter out the 1 tweet in a 100 that has any real value and am sure that once the search giants become involved, SPAM filtering will be their biggest and most resource-intensive issue. That aside, with only 140 characters and a half-baked (and easily spammed) hash tag ‘categorization’ on Twitter, I’ll be very interested to see how Google delivers on it’s core value of relevancy.

Grant Simmons | Director, SEO Account Management

As of today, it seems we have more questions than answers.  So add to the speculation and share your thoughts on these announcements.