Google Places have been swallowed up by Google+ Local Pages!!

As Google vies to maintain their dominance of the online advertising market, they made a play today for a bigger chunk of the mobile ads pie. Google Places have been swallowed up by Google+ Local Pages, merging all business listings into one to be used across search, Maps, mobile, and Google+.

Users can access enhanced local listings via a new Local tab in the left sidebar of Google+, by performing searches on the fly on their mobile (currently supporting Android, iOS coming soon), in Google searches, and through Maps.

Roughly 80 million Google Place pages worldwide have been automatically converted into 80 million Google+ Local pages, according to Google’s Marissa Mayer. It’s a dramatic change (for the better) though it will undoubtedly disorient some users and business owners.

Google unveiled ‘Knowledge Graph’, First Step in Next Generation Search!

Google recently unveiled the Knowledge Graph, which they’re calling the “first step in the next generation of search.” The initial release is gradually rolling out to U.S. English users and consists of three elements:

• Links to different sets of results based on contextual meanings for any given search term
• Topic summaries with key facts visible in the sidebar of the SERPs
• “Information boxes” that offer additional information in the SERPs sidebar based on popular related queries.

Google simultaneously announced in a separate blog post that Knowledge Graph for mobiles and tablets is in the works, with Android 2.2+ and iOS4+ versions rolling out right now.

Google said it has seen a noticeable increase in activity on its vaunted Web-search in the two weeks since the company began one of the biggest search transformations in its history.

“Early indications are that people are interacting with it more, learning about more things…and doing more [search] queries,” Google’s Senior VP Amit Singhal told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s stoking people’s curiosity.”

The Knowledge Graph shows a large box (or “panel”, as CEO Larry Page described it) to the right of Google’s organic search results on certain queries for noteworthy people, TV shows, sports teams, places, books, and other entities.

In addition to pulling some basic biographical or factual information from Wikipedia, Google links to related searches. Say you search for [aerosmith], Google links you to searches for the individual band members, popular songs and albums, and other rock bands that other people search for.

SEOs if they trust Google!!

Last week Barry Schwartz ran a poll asking “SEOs if they trust Google”

They have over 500 responses in and he broke it down for you.

Most SEOs do not trust Google; many sometimes trust them but most never fully trust them.

• 14% Trust Google
• 46% Sometimes Trust Google
• 35% Never Trust Google
• 5% Don't Know

What happens if someone link to a good page that later becomes spammy?

Google’s Matt Cutts described in a recent video about, what happens if someone link to a good page that later becomes spammy?

 

Google pushed out the first update to Penguin algorithm!!

Google has just pushed out the first update to its recent webspam-fighting Penguin algorithm.

Google’s Matt Cutts announced the news on Twitter, calling it a “data refresh” that impacts less than one-tenth of a percent of English-language searches.

Although webmasters and SEOs have been speculating consistently in recent weeks that Google had already pushed out a Penguin update (or several), Cutts specifically says this is the first update since Penguin launched back on April 24th.

Google has described Penguin as an algorithm change that’s aimed at webspam and, more specifically, “sites that we believe are violating Google’s quality guidelines.”

 

Google disapproved 134 million ads in 2011!!

Google revealed in a blog post  that they axed 134 million ads in 2011. 136% rise from the year before. Back in 2008, the company only disapproved 25 million ads.

The rise appears to be due to a combination of factors — first, there are just more bad ads out there.

“My interpretation is that the better we get, the faster we get at shutting them down, the more persistent they get,” David Baker, Google’s director of engineering for advertising said.

Secondly, Google appears to be getting better at detecting them over time.

“Despite the rising numbers that you see, the bottom line is that things are working,” Baker added “Things are improving over time.”

 

Google announced a new PO Box policy for Google Places!!

Google announced a new PO Box policy for Google Places. As per the new guidelines, you can no longer put your PO Box information in both the address 1 or 2 fields. Earlier businesses could do that, but not anymore. Here is what Google says about the changes made:

“As it stands today, we allow users to list their P.O. Box in Address Line 2. This sends your listing for manual review to our teams (that’s why you might see your listing’s status as “Pending”), who then verify the accuracy of Address Line 1.

Google announced a new report promising to provide advertisers with more transparency!

Google announced a new report for AdWords on the Inside AdWords blog, promising to provide advertisers with more transparency into the ad auction.

One of the more interesting things about this new report is that it provides Impression Share at the keyword level, something that has not been seen before. The new Auction Insights Report also provides some interesting competitor data. Another statistic provided that is worth returning to in-depth is the Top of page rate.

For years advertisers have struggled to understand how the auction process works and have asked for more insights into the auction to help optimize for better performance. Currently Google provides competitive reports at category level (in the Opportunities tab) and impression share data, but now they will offer information to show how advertisers are performing in comparison to other advertisers who compete in the same set of auctions.

Google introduced the Webmaster Academy !!

Google introduced a new way of getting to know it’s Webmaster Tools by providing them with lessons and practical examples rather than stacks of documentation. Inspired by the recent surge in educational sites, Google introduced the Webmaster Academy.

Google said, “Webmaster Academy provides practical and easy-to-understand lessons for beginner webmasters to help you improve your site with topics like getting your site in our index, providing search engines with helpful information about your video and image content, and understanding Webmaster Tools features.”

The Academy is expected to be highly useful for businesses coming online for the first time. They can learn how Google search functions and what factors affect ranking, and also gain insights on Search Engine Optimization. The initial articles have further links to advanced and in-depth articles on every topic.

The lessons don't assume anything and start out with the most basic "Learn how Google works." However, if you start reading through some of the topics, you'll find more documentation on more advanced topics once you're through. One of the advantages of Webmaster Academy is that most of the topics are accompanied by YouTube videos

Google implemented “Ads Related To...” Text on AdWords Top Ad Block

In its latest attempt to deliver top notch search results, search engine titan Google has implemented displaying text that says “Ads related to...” (and then whatever the search query was) when it displays AdWords ads at the top of search results pages.

The new text is displayed at the top of the yellow AdWords box on search engine results pages, with the user's search term displayed in bold. Dream Systems Media first noted the rollout in a blog post.

The objective, according to a Google spokesperson, is to empower users with more information: “As part of our ongoing efforts to show ads that are relevant and informative, we are including more information about why users are seeing certain search ads.”

Besides, Google claims that this latest effort at transparency is also meant to spur click-through rates--and has likely done so in extensive testing. Perhaps users are more likely to click when they understand better why they are getting the ads they are getting.

Furthermore, Google already provides information on why particular ads appear if users click on “Why These Ads?” at the top right of the yellow ad block, but this text provides very limited information at a glance.

 Image: “Ads related to shoes”: