CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-06-14 18:34:42 (1 comments, 5 reshares, 13 +1s)

Exceptional presentation by +Mary Bowling on data management and illustrating how important it is to have clean data about your business on the web. 

#local   #localsearch  

2013-06-13 01:15:55 (5 comments, 24 reshares, 37 +1s)

Are these patents a description of what we might see with Author Rank?

They do describe an "authority signature value" influenced by content that you're a creator of, and how pages might be ranked based upon topical authority.

They also answer the question about how authority might be used when there is more than one author.

2013-06-13 01:06:02 (13 comments, 6 reshares, 21 +1s)

Last month, Google's Matt Cutts described a new ranking signal that looked at the"authority" of authors or sites or both, and might help those rank higher.

Google was granted a number of patents last week that describe how a document on the Web might be ranked in part on the authority or expertise that it shows, the authority or expertise of its author or authors, and an "authorship signature value" based upon content created by authors on certain topics.

Do these describe an aspect of Author Rank or Agent Rank? Do they describe the possible authority ranking signals mentioned by Matt Cutts? They do answer one question that I've seen regarding "Author Rank," which is "what if there's more than one author?"

I pulled some highlights out of the patents, but there's lots of meat left for questions and further analysis. What... more »

2013-06-12 21:07:11 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

How Deep Learning and knowledgebase results are improving Google image search.

2013-06-12 01:27:11 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 14 +1s)

When I learned that the Polish Prime Minister was showing up in Google search results for the Polish version of "liar," I knew I would see George Bush's smiling face showing up for "miserable failure."

And there it was...  :)

h/t to +Nemek Nowaczyk 

2013-05-29 04:11:02 (0 comments, 4 reshares, 13 +1s)

Can Google benefit from Understanding when there's more than one URL per page?

What about when One URL is associated with one crawl, and another is associated with an XML feed, such as a product upload or a News Sitemap, and the feed contains additional information that could be associated with the crawl feed, such as prices for products, or geolocations for news feed URLs?

2013-05-24 14:54:39 (1 comments, 9 reshares, 21 +1s)

Google Predictive Algorithms Fueled by More Data?

Search engines are collecting more information about the world we live in, based upon the use of sensors that we carry around with us in our mobile devices. Not only that, but they are also capable of aggregating that data, and seeing how it might relate to those that we connect to via social networks and who we actually connect with in person, via things like blue tooth and GPS.

When Google hired the team at Behav.io, they hired people who had done a lot of research and experimentation into how to predict how ideas might spread via social networks and other communication. Behavio has a patent that looks at how ideas might ignite in social settings and spread from one person to another. The patent focuses upon an example of being able to predict when people might download a specific app, but makes it clear that it can be used in... more »

2013-05-22 20:01:46 (3 comments, 4 reshares, 15 +1s)

Google X

I'd love to be a fly on the wall inside the walls of Google X. This article hints at some of the research going on within its walls.

2013-05-22 18:41:38 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 10 +1s)

Really nice set of guidelines to building a business and marketing it in a way that helps get everyone in your business involved.

2013-05-18 18:40:48 (2 comments, 5 reshares, 12 +1s)

Google+ Ripples: A Native Visualization of Information Flow

Very interesting detailed study of Google Ripples a year after they were launched.

Authors include: +Fernanda Viegas , +Martin Wattenberg ,  +Jack Hebert , +Geoffrey Borggaard , +Alison Cichowlas , +Jonathan Feinberg,  +Jon Orwant , and Christopher Wren

The abstract tells us:

G+ Ripples is a visualization of information flow that shows users how public posts are shared on Google+. Unlike other social network visualizations, Ripples exists as a “native” visualization: it is directly accessible from public posts on Google+. This unique position leads to both new constraints and new possibilities for design. We describe the visualization technique, which is a new mix of node-and-link and circular treemap metaphors. We then describe user reactions as well as some of the patterns of sharing thatare m... more »

2013-05-18 17:31:57 (2 comments, 2 reshares, 17 +1s)

*Perception and Understanding of Social Annotations in
Web Search*

Very interesting eye tracking study from Google on how social annotations might impact searches, co-authored by Google's +Ed Chi  and Jennifer Fernquist.

Here are some of the questions explored in the paper:

(1) How do social annotations impact user behavior?

(2) Does moving social annotations to the top of results instead of at the bottom of them make any difference in how often people click through?

(3) Do people pay more attention to social annotations for some types of queries over others?

In the "abstract" section of the paper, we're told that: The results not only shed light on how social annotations should be designed in search engines, but also how users make use of social annotations to make decisions about which pages are useful and... more »

2013-05-17 23:46:44 (4 comments, 2 reshares, 8 +1s)

Google was granted a design patent on a Tablet Enclosure Credit Card Reader (D681,639) on May 7th, 2013

2013-05-16 23:10:37 (8 comments, 9 reshares, 27 +1s)

Where things stand now with Google Plus and authorship

2013-05-16 03:41:11 (4 comments, 14 reshares, 23 +1s)

Triggering Quality Rating Updates

A new patent describes how quality signals might improve the rankings of blogs in web search and/or blog search. In many ways, the approach used sounds like it might be very similar to how Panda works.

With Google's ongoing Panda updates, there are no more data refreshes that might change quality ratings for impacted sites. This patent introduces the idea that a change in a signal associated with a site (like a 10% increase in PageRank) could trigger a new rating for a site.

2013-05-14 11:08:51 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 10 +1s)

Knowledge Panels, Brands, and Authorship

Really thoughtful exploration of how Google is showing additional information in knowledge panels, and influences on where that kind of information comes from, and how it's displayed.

2013-05-12 20:30:44 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 16 +1s)

Learn, Discuss, Devour, Explore, and Experiment - That's Why Patents are Published in Public

In response to a recent video from Google's Matt Cutt's, I wrote this post about the value of search related patents (If I didn't, I don't know who would).

I write a lot of posts about patents from sources like Google, to provide information, insights, and assumptions made within those patents. Never take them for gospel that they describe what Google may be doing at any point in time, but definitely treat them as something that can be learned from.

2013-05-11 20:44:06 (16 comments, 7 reshares, 23 +1s)

When I see all this excitement over Matt Cutts' announcement of new Penguin rollout it makes me cringe. Any SEO consultant worth their salt should not even be phased by this.

Why do I say this? Because I believe in holistic SEO. That might sound like a hippy term to describe a high-tech skill set but I have found this to be the best way to describe what we do.

SEO should be all about achieving results through the attribution of ACTUAL value. It should not be about technical short cuts, white hat or black hat, to achieve great rankings.

What is your intent? Is it all about making more money for the sake of making more money? Or is it about providing value to your community, promoting your service or product which truly is worth the price you are asking for it?

Delivering true value, in the form of informative content, excellent customer service and great... more »

2013-05-11 00:00:13 (10 comments, 6 reshares, 12 +1s)

Interesting look into the software behind both Twitter and Google.

2013-05-10 06:00:39 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Happy to see Ghyslain Raza going strong 10 years after a video of him went viral on the web, and seeing him giving strength to others.

2013-05-09 10:21:47 (10 comments, 4 reshares, 13 +1s)

What to Include in Knowledge Panels

Google published a patent application for the knowledge panels that now show up in search results for queries that include entities, and how Google might decide what to place within those panels.

The patent filing includes a lot of examples of different templates for different types of entities, but some of the additional details regarding those knowledge panels themselves are pretty interesting.

One thing that I noticed was that even though there's a specific example template regarding large publicly traded companies such as "Exxon Mobile", including a stock market graph, an actual search for exxon mobile shows me local search information for the nearest Exxon station.

What have you seen in a knowledge panel that may have surprised you?

2013-05-08 09:06:03 (0 comments, 12 reshares, 11 +1s)

Deep Learning

Worth paying attention to where this research is heading.

2013-05-07 05:11:36 (0 comments, 6 reshares, 11 +1s)

Google and Open Learning Extraction

When Google acquired Wavii, they didn't acquire a news summarizer and aggregation widget - the acquired a different way to crawl the web, and understand relationships between objects, to strengthen Google's about to answer questions.

The Wavii team has joined Google's knowledge base team, according to reports of the acquisition. The biggest impact will probably be on improving Google's knowledge base and Google Now.

2013-05-07 03:40:34 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 5 +1s)

Search Needs a Shakeup

A two page article orginally published in Nature Magazine in 2011, has Oren Etzioni pokes a hole in Google, Bing, and Wolphram Alpha, and their limited abilities to actually answer questions. Is Open information extraction the future of search engines? It could be.

2013-05-07 03:31:00 (4 comments, 10 reshares, 13 +1s)

Building the Next Generation Search Engine

2013-05-07 03:11:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

The Knowledge Bottleneck

The step towards knowledge bases and artificial intelligence on the Web starts with machine reading on the Web.

This is one of the paths that Google is following in their efforts towards building a knowledge-based web.

2013-05-07 03:02:08 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

On the switch from "Search" to "Knowledge" at Google, the Knowledgebase, and the transformation of search.

2013-05-05 01:20:20 (0 comments, 7 reshares, 7 +1s)

Hi Everyone,

I've been following along with the announcements from Google about Google Glass for a while now, and keeping a close eye on patent filings from them on Glass. Saw this patent acquisition show up at the USTPO last week, and  the fact that the Head of Operations at Google X is listed as an inventory or co-inventor on them was pretty interesting.

2013-05-05 02:24:26 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 14 +1s)

More Patents for Google Glass

Google acquired a number of pending and granted patents on wearable computer glasses last month, in an transaction that appeared at the USPTO in the past week.

The patent filings are originally from The MicroOptics Corporation (which later became MyVu). The patents all share an inventor or co-inventor, Mark Spitzer, who was the founder and CEO of MicroOptics/MyVu.

Mark Spitzer is presently the Director of Operations at Google X.

The company that assigned the patents to Google is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., LTD. and Gold Charm Limited (a subsidiary of Hon Hai). They also are rumored to be the company that will oversee the management of the manufacturing of Google Glass in Santa Clara, California.

While Google did some serious rapid prototyping of Google Glass, I included a number of images from the patents... more »

2013-05-01 21:49:37 (41 comments, 41 reshares, 138 +1s)

Maybe I shouldn't skip lunch.

2013-04-30 11:04:45 (13 comments, 12 reshares, 26 +1s)

Roadmap for Machine Learning on Mobile

Google's patent for how machine learning might work on mobile devices describes how an API might allow communications between applications, sensors, built-in functions on a device and user interactions and behaviors while using the phone.

In addition to doing things like re-ranking your phone contacts based upon a present or near future need, recommending titles for photographs and albums, suggesting playlists for you based upon where you're at and what activities you might be engaging it, silencing your phone for you on a visit to a movie theatre, a mobile machine learning system likely points to a future of search that relies more upon both machine learning and predictive algorithms.

2013-04-28 06:29:53 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

If you're curious about why we talk about procurement so much, watch this video.

2013-04-28 00:14:42 (1 comments, 3 reshares, 12 +1s)

This is from last year, but hasn't been shared enough.

Remember, Google acquired Behav.io a few weeks ago.  Google Now, and it's predictive algorithms could benefit tremendously from collecting a broader set of sensor data, and aggregating it based upon things like location and the associations of individuals.

2013-04-27 12:40:33 (21 comments, 2 reshares, 10 +1s)

My two-week review of Google Glass: it all depends on the price

This week I gave five speeches while wearing it.
I passed through airports four times (two more in a couple of hours).
I let hundreds of people try my Google Glass.
I have barely taken it off since getting it other than to sleep.

Here's my review after having Google Glass for two weeks:

1. I will never live a day of my life from now on without it (or a competitor). It's that significant. 
2. The success of this totally depends on price. Each audience I asked at the end of my presentations "who would buy this?" As the price got down to $200 literally every hand went up. At $500 a few hands went up. This was consistent, whether talking with students, or more mainstream, older audiences.
3. Nearly everyone had an emotional outburst of "wow" or... more »

2013-04-27 01:18:09 (4 comments, 4 reshares, 20 +1s)

I searched the community, but didn't see this anywhere else. +Mark Traphagen if there's a better place to share this, please straighten me out. I found it to be quite a remarkable breakdown. Via +martin shervington whose questions were thorough and helpful. 

2013-04-26 17:02:43 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 15 +1s)

Adheat, Advertising, Social Influence, and Interactivity

Social activities on the Web have their own benefits regardless of SEO or paid search. But chances are that we will see them impact how search engines work, in the future.

In Google's new patent on advertising in a social network, they describe how they might identify influencers and people who engage others in social activities, to determine who those advertisers should display advertisements to. 

What's interesting is that while those scores might be useful in terms of advertisements, they might also be signals that could be used for web rankings as well, as part of how to calculate a reputation score (a user rank) that might influence how much weight social endorsements might carry from a particular individual, and how much weight might be passed along to influence search rankings. 
more »

2013-04-25 17:27:53 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

I'm a Trading Card

Actually I like the idea a lot. Who says you should be in sports to be included in something like this? The USTPO produced some famous inventory trading cards last year, and those were pretty awesome - http://www.uspto.gov/kids/trading-cards.jsp

I seem to be included in some pretty good company, too.

2013-04-25 01:26:11 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

Okay +Project Glass. Based on your response to me and therein denying development of Glass for zombies I have decided to help. With my very own undead R&D department I have begun prototyping my own version of Google Glass for zombies. After some short testing I think I have met the unique challenges that come with the walking dead and the rest of the reanimated corpses I deal with on a daily basis. It is still in the early stages but I am quite satisfied with how it has turned out. I would love to share with you my research gathered thus far.
I give you:

Project Zombie Glass

#GZG  (Google Zombie Glass) or #ProjectZglass  

Whether you are human/undead/creature/ghoul/etc, please share this post. The world needs to know how serious an impact this could be. Lives could be saved.

2013-04-18 01:34:05 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 12 +1s)

Kurzweil's Hidden Poetry Patents

I promised an audience at the Digital Marketing for Business Conference earlier this week that I would write a post about the poetry patents that Ray Kurzweil co-invented.

The session was on "The Future of SEO," and it's possible that it is part of the future that search will bring to us. When Google starts speaking in sonnets and haiku, we'll know the Singularity is upon us.

2013-04-16 00:39:40 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 17 +1s)

Getting ready to rock SEO at the Digital Marketing for Business afternoon session with +Jenny Halasz +Russ Jones and +Bill Slawaski. #dmfb #raleigh

2013-04-14 20:53:25 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 16 +1s)

North Carolina Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Raleigh.

2013-04-14 03:39:21 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

Achievement unlocked: Successful startup while having twins!
Thanks to everyone who followed and supported us and our work. The Behavio team is now a part of Google! http://behav.io 


#Behavio   #Google  

2013-04-13 22:28:54 (13 comments, 2 reshares, 19 +1s)

#Goog   #google   #googlenow   #googleglasses   #googleglass   #googleglassproject   #tech  

2013-04-13 12:17:58 (5 comments, 2 reshares, 9 +1s)

wow, Grouptivity in action already

2013-04-11 23:56:23 (0 comments, 10 reshares, 13 +1s)

Google + Pages for Places

Just a little closer for some businesses. It is interesting seeing Google put together all the pieces of Google Plus.

2013-04-11 22:24:31 (10 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Want to eat dinner with +Mark Traphagen and +Bill Slawski the night before the event? We only have room for 6 attendees, so act fast. 

2013-04-10 22:14:20 (11 comments, 10 reshares, 14 +1s)

Check your blog now! (This hit me yesterday - I used the scan on the main sucuri site, which identified it) h/t to +Dixon Jones 

2013-04-10 17:05:31 (2 comments, 12 reshares, 21 +1s)

Google News Ranking Signals Updated

Around a month ago, I wrote a post about a chance discovery on the part of a Computerworld author of the latest continuation patent from Google dealing with how articles are ranked on Google News.

When Google News chooses one or two articles to display about an event or topic out of a cluster of similar topics, part of the analysis as to which article to display depends upon a score for the source.

The Computerworld article didn't look at the updated claims section of the patent (it wasn't even included in the link they provided to the newer version). So their analysis was based upon the original description of the first version of the patent (which is identical to the description in the third "continuation" patent.)

This is a problem because the continuation patent claims section is updated to reflect... more »

2013-04-10 12:54:59 (4 comments, 8 reshares, 8 +1s)

Google Accent Scores?

Accents were once noise that Google's voice search may have tried to filter out when returning search results to searchers. A patent from Google indicates that accents might now become signals that could be used to show different results based upon those accents.

An accent might signal that you speak a different language in addition to the one used in your query, and results in that language might start appearing.

Google might also boost some results based upon accents. It could do this in a data driven fashion by collecting accent information, and seeing if people speaking with that accent tend to prefer some results over others.

While this accent score approach could work with different languages, it could also work with queries in the same language from speakers using different accents. So the accent of a searcher from Brooklyn... more »

2013-04-08 04:11:11 (2 comments, 8 reshares, 17 +1s)

Location Relevant Categories and Google

No subway system in rural Virginia?  When I start typing s-u-b-w-ay into a Google search box, I don't get auto completed search suggestions for [subway schedules] or [subway maps], but I do get a lot of suggestions related to the sandwich franchise.

Plenty of subway stations in Manhattan? I change my location to New York, New York, and suddenly [subway schedules] and  [subway maps] do appear amongst the sub sandwich shop suggestions.

Is Google placing different relevance based on categories depending upon your actual location (based upon GPS or wifi connnections or cell phone triangulation), or upon where you set your location?

It certainly looks like it for query autocomplete suggestions. The patent tells us that advertisements and Web search results might vary based upon category relevant locationd... more »

2013-04-07 19:15:25 (12 comments, 18 reshares, 29 +1s)

What Are Dangerous Links?

I like the idea behind this statement from the article, but it made me wonder.  +Eric Enge notes in the post:

"Start actively building unimpeachable links, and start working on eliminating the bad ones. I am not saying that you need to stand on the rooftops and yell out "hey Google I sinned come punish me", but you can begin asking sites that are the source of dangerous links to remove them."

I received an email last week from someone who asked me if I would remove a link from my site that was pointing at their (?) site. The email thanked me for linking to their site, but stated that the link was one that was likely against Google's guidelines.

I responded that I would be happy to remove the link, but before I did, I would like an answer from them about how the link might have "violated Google's... more »