I will admit it, I have a very ‘frugal’ attitude towards information and the internet. So when Google bought Zagat it was the first I’d heard of the long running rating service.
For those who are web-frugal like me, it may come as a surprise that this paid food review service has managed to go from a printed format to on-line. Most attempts along those lines die quickly when it becomes obvious there’s a niche for the information. However Zagat’s originators were very clever in how they have gone digital and it’s worked very well indeed:
A paid member of Zagat gets a selection of discounts and promotions which quickly pay for the perks that come with paying $25 a year. Free members have to include payment details which helps to force genuine/honest sign-ups for the most part. This keeps the information useful, while still providing enough access to retain the casual user who might never pay, but is likely to contribute.
With any luck Google will quickly merge this product into their services, allow you to login with your Google profile, and eventually apply all these great search features to the entire database of eateries.
As much as I like to ‘skim’ the net for free, without coughing up any info or details, I decided to try out Zagat’s 7 day offer.
The 1st Challenge:
A hamburger in downtown Victoria BC should be an easy challenge for a city packed with pubs?
Apparently not, since the only result was an “Eclectic / Int’l, Vegetarian” with an impressive almond burger. I’ve had non-meat hamburgers, but ‘Vegetarian’ is not what I was looking for and certainly the last place I’d suggest given my years living here.
The 2nd Challenge:
Pretending I was the average homesick traveller with no idea of the city’s offerings I decided to search for some ‘American’ cuisine.
Thinking of all the steak houses, and US brands operating in the city core, I was sure I’d get a good list to pick from, yet Zagat disappointed me again. This time they suggested a ‘Barbecue, Creole’ dive outside of the city core which is famous for it’s unpretentious ‘here’s sum meat’ approach to dinning. If I had typed in ‘budget BBQ’ that is the only way I would have anticipated such a result.
The 3rd Challenge:
I’d tried something specific, I’d tried an entire country, lets just see what they can list?
Well at first I felt I’d hit the jackpot, look at all the results! Then I started clicking on the places Zagat was suggesting and they were all over in Vancouver, an entirely different city, not even located on the same landmass as my city and currently selected location?
So that’s when I started to see the problem, tried a blank search for “Victoria, Canada” with a radius of 15 miles, and the result was only 29 restaurants..
At that point I started fiddling with the sliders/filters:
- Food
- Decor
- Service
- Cost
- Distance
- % liked
- Relevance
- Reviews
- etc..
Wow!
This is what I want!
Give us tools for doing specific searches!
I need these tools for more than just food, and now I can see another reason (beyond challenging Yelp!) why Google bought Zagat.
Sure my local city needs more reviews to help things along, but that’s not Google or Zagat’s fault, we just need to start discussing something we do every single day.
I know that personally I will give this service a few reviews, once I find a place to have lunch. 
SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:39 am
Google announced on August 31st, that they would be implementing a fundamental change to the way that Google categorizes link data in Webmaster Tools.
Google’s Webmaster Tools lists links coming to your site into two separate categories internal and external. Google stated that: "Today’s update won’t change your total number of links, but will hopefully present your backlinks in a way that more closely aligns with your idea of which links are actually from your site vs. from other sites"
Prior to this change, subdomains were treated as a separate entity and any links from it would be considered as an external link by Google. As of the announcement, these will now be treated as internal links; the reasoning being that they reside within the parent domain.
Google rationalized that most users treat www and non-www domains (www.example .com & example.com) as the same thing and that many people that own a domain typical own the subdomains as well. "…so links from cats.example.com or pets.example.com will also be categorized as internal links for www.example.com".
"If you own a site that’s on a subdomain (such as googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com) or in a subfolder (www.google.com/support/webmasters/) and don’t own the root domain, you’ll still only see links from URLs starting with that subdomain or subfolder in your internal links, and all others will be categorized as external links. We’ve made a few backend changes so that these numbers should be even more accurate for you."
Google did however give the caveat that if you own a www.example.com or example.com site, that the number of external links may appear to go down as the reclassification of the urls that were once external will now be internal, but that the total number of links (internal + external) will be remain the same.
The biggest questions that arise from these changes are: Can we speculate that Google will be changing the way they treat links from subdomains in their link algorithm? Most importantly, will fewer subdomains be listed in the SERPs as individual results?
You can read the ongoing discussion in the Webmaster World forum and the see the official Google blog release called Reorganizing Internal vs. External Backlinks
SEO news blog post by Kyle Krenbrink @ 9:23 am
If you’ve been able to get on-line with all the outages this morning (EAST-1 was down for a bit) then you may have seen a number of links showing up for ‘free invites’ to Google+.
I know we did an article about the rumor that Google+ was going to accept new sign-ons without invitations on July 31st, but this came from the ‘official Facebook group’ which was a rather poor source. To my knowledge, the rumour never panned out and we still have an invite only system in place where Google can track how each person is related to the next. It’s not hard to get into Google+, it’s only difficult to do it anonymously.
Almost all the links are valid, point to a “ngemlink” path, and seem to work, even though the final section appears to be totally random:
Random invite example #1
Random invite example #2
Random invite example #3
This would mean that advertisers, groups, and other technically ‘unwanted’ new users should be hitting the system for the first time without a legitimate connection to the accounts that are letting them join? If that’s the case, where’s the response? The only thing I found related to spamming on Google threads today was this little thank you picture:
Perhaps I am in a quite circle of the web and I haven’t got the exposure to such things, but my Google+ profile has been entirely spam free. Indeed, the worst offender for spamming are associates in the SEO business that like to push out a few posts per day due to the wide range of stuff they tackle. Most of that content is related to topics that I’m interested in both professionally and personally, so it’s not really spam per se, just an excess of content that dwarfs the smaller feeds.
It’s quiet, almost too quiet..
SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:43 am
Before the Panda Algorithm update from Google, using articles was part of an effective SEO strategy and was commonplace. Articles were submitted to syndication sites that would link back to the website specified in the article’s bio at the end of the article.
After the Panda update, major article sites such as Ezinearticles and eHow suffered huge losses in rankings and traffic. As a result SEOs have had to ask themselves whether or not article marketing should still be part of their overall link building strategy.
The quality and strength of links back to the client site was hotly debated for some time. Indicators showed that the link equity that articles provided were only of limited value. The links acted more like a pointers and helped with the discovery of your site. The real benefit came to the article site that accumulated trust, authority and PageRank due to the articles it published. Very little link juice flowed back to the client.
If you wanted to distribute your articles to more than one site, it would be treated as duplicate content. The real value from Ezinearticles was finding people who were interested in taking your content and publishing it in exchange for a link, then tracking the competition in the space to see what other link building sources/methods they were using.
Post Panda, articles are still somewhat useful, but the standards have changed. The Panda update is focused on bringing quality back to the web. AS a result of diminished rankings and penalties from Google, articles sites and the web in general have and to raise the status quo for content on their websites and articles alike.
It is also no longer worthwhile to anyone to mass distribute articles through a large syndication network. Websites are now more severally penalized for having duplicate content.
Article syndication is still a viable means of link building but is even more limited post-panda but it has resulted in a fundamental paradigm shift. The focus is now is on quality; not quantity.
Articles should only be published to 3-5 of the best ranking syndication sites. You should not publish more than 15-20 articles per year. The ROI just does not add up for the amount of effort put in to this tactic.
The most important thing to learn from the Panda update is to diversify your link building strategies with several methodologies and tactics. The sites that suffered the most from Panda update were those that put all their eggs into one basket. Produce high quality content and the visitors and rankings will follow.
Points to remember are:
- Article Marketing is still a viable marketing strategy…just much less important that it was pre-Panda.
- Raise the quality of your published content (in articles and onsite).
- Submit to no more than 3-5 articles directories and only submit about 15-20 articles per year.
- Link to your articles from your website and other sources
- Don’t think of the tactic as link building, but an arrow leading back to where the quality content can be found.
SEO news blog post by Kyle Krenbrink @ 7:01 pm
No…this is not a nerdy Dungeons & Dragons reference. Google announced on Wednesday that they are introducing a new feature called "+1 Button." This new feature from Google is still in the experimental phase, but it is most definitely going to have an impact on SEO and rankings. So far this new feature has only been release in English searches in the USA and Canada.
Use +1 to give something your public stamp of approval, so friends, contacts, and others can find the best stuff when they search. Get recommendations for the things that interest you, right when you want them, in your search results.
Your +1′s are public. They can appear in Google search results, on ads, and sites across the web. You’ll always be able to see your own +1′s in a new tab on your Google Profile, and if you want, you can share this tab with the world.
Google states clearly that:
The +1 button is shorthand for "this is pretty cool" or "you should check this out."
Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.
Google is being very clear that this will have a significant impact on sites and will be part of the new Google Social Ranking signals. It seems that this is another step in reducing the emphasis on links as a ranking signal as well.
It is well documented that social signals are already a determining factor in determining rank. Facebook "shares", for instance have long been established as having a significant impact on rank.
This is another move towards the "Social Web" by Google. Inbound marketing is definitely the future for all SEO efforts and will soon be one of the few ways to garner truly organic traffic to your site. It is increasingly necessary to engage users across as many social mediums as possible.
From an SEO standpoint, some people feel that the new social metrics will be easy to game. However, I would have to disagree. Google collects a lot of information on users in order to determine that profiles are in fact tied to real people and are authentic. Taking a look at your Google Dashboard will give you a good indication of some of the main factors that Google uses to determine if you are “rea” [erson with authority. Some of the factors Google will look at are: Gmail account, Analytics, Blogger, Buzz, Calendar, Contacts, Google Docs, Picassa, Reader, and perhaps most importantly: Social Circle and Content.
Both Bing and Google have been very clear that links shared through Twitter and Facebook have a direct impact on rankings and as SEOs we need to make this major part of our SEO strategies.
Google is already working on implementing a +1 feedback button for you to embed on your website. This will be similar to the Facebook "Like" button, or the Twitter "Tweet" button, or an upvote. Once you enable +1 you’re also opted in to show this information on 3rd party sites in exactly the same was as Facebook buttons.
I think the biggest concern that arises from the implementation of this new feature, is what about sites that are not necessarily “cool” or “popular,” but are more useful in nature. We can only hope and assume that the more traditional ranking signals will still hold water for these sites.
SEO news blog post by Kyle Krenbrink @ 6:35 pm
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The servers over at Google+ must feel a bit like this?
