Accuracy and Consistency

The most important point about a company’s Google places page is accuracy.  Companies should double check that all the available fields are filled in with accurate information in order to provide the best experience for visitors.  In addition, the same information should be used on all other directory listings so that someone going to any search result about your business sees consistent information.   Other directories that affect Google places include (but are not limited to):

• Yelp

• Superpages

• City Search

• Urban Spoon and OpenTable (for restaurants)

• Yellow Pages

• Angie’s List

• Express Update USA (formally infoUSA)

• Yahoo Local

• Trip Advisor

• Merchant Circle

• Dex Knows

• Insider Pages

• Localeze

• Shop City

• Judy’s Book

• Yellow Bot

• Kudzo

Appealing and Complete Information

It is also important to add eye-catching photos (add at least five of the ten available) and videos (at least one of the five available) of your business so that it stands out from the others on the search results.  Make sure to choose the best category for your business and write an appealing description.

In addition, fill out all the other information, including: Business Details: Hours of Operations, Payments options, service area, parking options, Brand name carried, Professional Association and other information about your business to the best of your ability.

Offers (Coupons)

Another way to make your listing stand out is to use the Google’s offers service to give coupons to potential customers.

Encourage Reviews

Reviews raise local rankings but must be done without incentive, according to Google’s review guidelines. Ask your customers, social media fans or followers, and visitors to leave you a review.   Provide them with a link to your Places page, and ask for their honest opinion.   You can also ask for reviews on the following directories that also affect Google Places listings:

·        superpages.com

·        yahoo.com

·        kudzu.com

·        judysbook.com

·        yellowbot.com

·        opentable.com

·        tripadvisor.com

·        citysearch.com

·        hotels.com

Promote your Places Page

Promote your local page: Add a link to your Google place page from your website, other niche directories, social sites and anywhere else you think this might be possible.

Just for Franchises:

If your company has several locations or franchise locations, you can use the bulk upload feature for Google Places.   Make sure each franchise is named correctly under its incorporated name, and don’t add keywords into the name, categories, or descriptions, or your listings may be denied. Each franchise listing should have a unique email, address, location specific description, and phone number.

Questions can be posed to the Google Places support team by reporting a problem on the Places page.

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Regaining Trust in Links: Google Plus and Social Authorship
Because link building has been somewhat abused over the years by blackhat SEOs, Google and other search engines must now be able to “trust” your links. So how does Google determine a trustworthy link? Last year Google enabled “rel author,” a markup that people can use to display the author of a web page by associating it with a Google Plus profile. So more importantly than just where the link is coming from (ex: www.boomtownig.com) is who it comes from (ex: Sue McCrossin, Owner of Boomtown Internet Group). Now Google can see that the link has been manually associated with a human profile on which they already have data. The search engine can gather the author’s bio, location, company and job title, and links to other websites and social platforms that the author is involved with, all from their Google Plus profile page. Google knows that a human will most likely not claim a spam link, deeming that link trustworthy.

At Boomtown, we have been encouraging our clients to utilize “rel author” and claim authorship of their blog posts, articles, etc. The more trust you can build as a credible source in Google’s eyes, the better off your link building efforts. As an established author on your topic, the search engine is more likely to rank your pages above an anonymous author.

Google and its social platform are showing no signs of slowing down, which is apparent in the most recent Google Plus changes. Changes include a more customized interface (now very closely resembling Facebook’s new layout) and an “Explore” page that posts trending topics across the site. Although it has just been implemented, this feature working along with Google organic search could prove to be a powerful combination in how Google will continue to rank web pages and links based on authorship. If you do not have a Google Plus profile page yet, now is the time to create one – not just for social purposes, but for reputation and linking as well.

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Google announced that their new Analytics platform would go live mid-April, and that date has arrived. Next time you login to your GA dashboard, you may notice something different.  Where previously you could toggle back and forth between the new and old versions of Google Analytics to become familiar with the new layout and features, this is no longer an option as the old dashboard is gone.

Analytics is the tool of choice for Boomtown and other marketing professionals – and this new version of GA has some of Google’s muscle behind it.  This version still includes core measurements like page views, visits, and visitor numbers, but what is different and here to stay is the ability to easily drill down different menus to figure out what these stats mean and how they relate to each other.  A deep look at audience behavior, measuring engagement, and what’s going on with numbers (and their context) is Google’s aim.

We think that it’s more important than ever to figure out what you want to measure and define in terms of site goals – first identify what metric is significant and then detail how to track these factors over time.  As a Boomtown best practice, we set up goals for all clients and review Google Analytics in depth regularly, particularly for month end reporting.

A Brief Review of New Features

The “Audience” tab provides a visitor overview – probably the most familiar report for those familiar with the old version of Analytics.  This section provides all the basic metrics you’re interested in, including visitors, page views, visits, and more.  Other reports here include demographics (now with more in-depth information provided by Google, including geography and language), behavior (how often visitors visit, how much content is consumed per visit, whether or not they are new or returning visitors), social media reports, mobile reports, and technologies used.

In the new version of Google Analytics, you can find a report called “visitor flow”.  This diagrams where visitors are coming from and where they entered your site.  Also, their path after arriving.  You are able to magnify this diagram and zoom to different levels of detail. This provides a better look at what content is working and what connections visitors make between different web pages. 

The “Traffic sources” tab provides an in-depth look at where your visitors are coming from – in the “content’ area, you’re allowed to look at site traffic from which particular content visitors are browsing and links back to you site from advertising, keywords and social media.  You can also check to see which pages are most popular.  Analytics has a real-time feature that allows you to see who is on your website currently, where they’re coming from, and the search terms that brought them there.

Another new analytics feature is the sharing of customized dashboards and metrics. Google allows you to create multiple analytics dashboards that you can share with others via a link – it also allows you to set up summary report and automatic emails.  This can include high level reports, specific reporting, and summaries.

A Look into the Social Analytics Feature

“Social Analytics” is now available as a main menu option on the left side of Google Analytics, visible under the standard reporting tab.

No configuration or setup is required for this new feature—new social analytics are available to everyone.  This is very convenient as social media tracking previously involved setting up custom segments and custom reports.

What this update adds is the convenience of social metrics grouped together – the contribution of social media to conversion can be now easily assessed as a group.  This update will be useful for the additional detail on social media sharing and comparison as GA now automatically groups main social referrals.

Boomtown is excited to start fully implementing Google Analytics’ new features into our reporting and Internet marketing strategy.  Have you gotten a chance to play around with the new version of GA? Should you have questions, contact a Boomtown rep.

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This is a great free marketing tool for small businesses to promote their publications on the web. You can submit your book(s) by either uploading it digitally or submitting a hard copy. Once Google approves it, users can optimize their book’s preview description and title, as well as supply a purchase link.

Google Books in Organic Search Results
You can search for a publication on Google Books either through a regular web search or a search on Google Books, where results appear like this:

After acceptance of your publication, Google scans and indexes all pages. So for example, if you are writing a book about gardening, your book will potentially show up in search results for the word “gardening” plus other relevant terms such as hydrangeas, lilies, sunflowers, etc. that Google deems “searchable.”

If users find a book they like, there are two options: buy the book in print or ebook format, or borrow the book from the Google Library. Every book has a corresponding reference page containing a summary, the book’s category, reviews, and where you can find it from major retailer websites or in libraries.

How to Upload Your Google Book

1. Go to books.google.com/partner and sign in or set up your Google Partner account
2. Click on the Preview Program tab on top of screen
3. On right, click “Add/Update Books”
4. If your book doesn’t have an ISBN number, skip to Step 5. If it does, add the ISBN, title, author, territorial rights (i.e. choose the countries whose web results you’d like your books to appear), and a buy link if applicable.
5. At top of page click “Upload/Ship Books.” Upload your PDF or ePubs using Google Uploader (this is the fastest way and is simple to install)
6. If your book is in print, ship it to the address listed on this page, and follow the instructions closely.
7. It may take Google a couple of weeks to process your publication, but you will be sent an email notification when finished. You can also set up your account to receive email notifications when people download your book or borrow it from a library.

How Google Books Helps Online Marketing Efforts
From here you can gauge how your book is performing on the web and if users are finding your information relevant to their searches. For more detailed reports (how many impressions your book makes in search results, how many pageviews its reference page receives, how many have been purchased over time, etc.) select “Reports” beneath the Preview Program tab.

Also if you are an author of a title on Google Books and have a Google+ account, that title is more likely to appear in search results of people in your circles, as well as other circles of users who have “+1’ed” your book.

For more information on setting up your Google Books Partner Program account, contact Stephanie Aiello at Stephanie.Aiello@boomtownig.com.

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What is the New Facebook Timeline?

First and foremost, the new Timeline radically changes what visitors see upon arriving at your page.  If for instance, you have a landing page tab installed, visitors will no longer be able to see that first.  Facebook still provides the option of installing additonal tabs (something you’ll need to do if you want to run promotions and contests and stay within Facebook’s guidelines) but you’ll no longer be able to set one of them as default for visitors arriving at your page.  Luckily, there are several ways to work around this as Facebook has introduced new functionalities.

Apps and tabs are showcased through images at the top of the page.  These images are larger than previous.  This is an improvement—you’ll be able to use more eye-catcing graphics than the smaller menu links on the previous Pages.  Unfortunately, you’re only limited to four at a time.  If you’re a business who features many functions on your page, you’ll have to carefully prioritize.

There are now several new options for posting.  You’re able to “pin” a post so that it stays at the top of the page–this is similar to Facebook’s “sticky” post in forums.  New “highlighted” post format allows your post to take up the entire full page.  You now have more flexbility in posting and the way you interact with your page visitors, or “Likers”.

Facebook has also made it possible for users to privately message page administrators.  This means Facebook business pages are becoming more of a customer service portal—users are able to send private messages to Business owner pages, instead of publically communicating via Wall.

One of the most obvious new changes is the “cover image” or the full-width image on the top of the new business page layout.  This is an opportunity for some branding and imagery—but also comes with a number of new Facebook restrictions.  (Including no “calls to action”, financial offers, purchase information, or encouragement to “Like” the page.)  Here are more details about Facebook’s cover image restrictions.

This new layout allows visitors to browse a timeline of major news events and learn more about certain items of interest by sharing, commenting, and viewing videos and stories.  The Facebook timeline is a better way to connect with followers by telling a more “interactive” story.  Why?  This new look better combines Twitter, Tumblr, Blogs, and Facebook features, allowing your visitors to scroll across time and browse stories, videos, information, sharing all with the Facebook community—without leaving your business page.  This is significantly different than how users explore a traditional website.

Use the new Facebook Timeline to tell your brand’s story.  This is particularly useful if you are a non-profit—you can share with your followers how you achieved your goals.  It’s also useful for larger brands (Coca Cola), and entertainers.  Smaller businesses and startups find the Timeline useful to tell their stories too.

This is quite a big change—possibly the biggest change since Facebook business pages were introduced.  Facebook seems to be wanting to attract more businesses to the site and there are now many more features for businesses to take advantage of, including Facebook offers, Facebook insight, and new advertising options.  We will touch on these features soon in a follow up post.  We’re looking forward to working through Facebook’s new creative possibilities with our clients—check back to our blog for another Facebook post soon!

Should you have questions about your new Facebook page, don’t hesitate to contact a Boomtown rep.  erica.ronchetti@boomtownig.com

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The original Panda update was released about a year ago, and it was designed to improve the relevancy of search results. The algorithm has been tweaked several times since then, and the most recent update was in January. Panda 3.2 did little more than refresh the data in the system, which Panda 3.3 will also do.

The Panda 3.3 update also changes a few signals that Google uses to rank search results. The official Google blog states that an old signal associated with backlinks will no longer be used to generate search rankings. Google has refused to comment any further on the matter, so the identity of the signal remains a mystery.

According to the official Google blog, Panda 3.3 also changes the way that local searches are handled. This initiative will result in local search results that are tied closely to the main Google search rankings. Google has also stated that these changes will make it easy for users to find results from their own cities.

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On-Demand Magento Support
Have you implemented a Magento site, but can’t seem to reach the development team when issues arise? Boomtown Internet Group provides on-demand Magento support post-development for both routine maintenance and emergencies. Our programmers know the ins and outs of the system, able to troubleshoot issues small and large. Having problems with a sluggish or unresponsive site? Allow one of our system specialists to analyze your server capacity and recommend potential remedies – prevent site crashes before they happen during seasonal rushes. We will become as involved as you’d like us to be; whether you need the occasional question answered or someone to act as site manager, our team is available for on-going support. We understand that your business depends on the functionality of your website – you can count on quick response time and quicker resolutions.

Magento Development and Design
Our developers have several years of experience working with various technologies including Java, CSS, Drupal, Word Press, PHP, Flash, and many others. We can create and integrate complex extensions with Magento and other third party ecommerce solutions. Our developers stay abreast of the latest updates in the world of Magento in order to deliver customized results in line with business goals. Not only do we grasp the coding aspect of ecommerce stores, but we also recognize the importance of design. Each Magento website is designed and developed closely following a set of best practices to ensure your online store is a success.

Magento SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Our experienced SEO team works closely with clients to ensure their businesses achieve maximum visibility in organic search results. This includes optimizing your ecommerce platform to drive as much revenue as possible from on-site and off-site optimzation. Magento is said to be one of the most SEO-friendly online shopping carts – our team will diligently assess which actions need to be taken in order to optimize products properly. We have a tight grasp on everything from basic configuration to advanced Magento SEO troubleshooting. Our goal is that your products are found online to enhance profit. Choose Boomtown for initial Magento SEO once your store is built – we will optimize all products and categories, configure basic technical aspects, and clean up code on your template. We are also happy to assist you with Magento SEO troubleshooting that stems from duplicate content, disabled product links, and other issues that naturally arise with the ebb and flow of online commerce.

Boomtown Internet Group strives to offer a complete ecommerce solution through our extensive Magento knowledge and support base. Our goal is for your Magento store to be fully functioning 100% of the time so you never lose out on potential revenue. Make the best of the powerful resources Magento has to offer with our help!

To learn more about Magento development or support, contact a Boomtown Internet Group representative today at 888-454-3330, or shoot us a message.

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Create Your Profile

Creating a Google+ page is easy. After you create your Google+ profile (which you can sign up for with a Gmail address), you click the HOME button up top and look on the right hand side for the link to Google+ pages.

Pick a business category (you have the choice of local, brand, organization, arts or other), and add your product and brand information. That’s it.  Now you have a Google+ business page.

Back at your profile page, under your name at the top, you’ll see a link for your new Google+ page, and you can click on it to manage your page.

You can share this page with up to 50 other administrators as well by clicking on the gear at the top right, then settings, then looing for the manage link on the left.

After you have dragged and dropped photos and added as much information as you like to your profile, you can start sharing comments.  In order to engage as many people as possible, you should add all your employees, friends and customers in your circles. Encourage them to suggest feedback and engage in the conversations on your Google+ page.

Promoting Your Google+ Page

In order to promote your page, you will want to follow as many influential people as you can by adding them to your circles.  Circles can be segmented to keep your followers and influencers separate. You should encourage the people in your circles to share your page with their own circles. You should customize your discussions to your different circles.  For instance, if a certain customer has a complaint and airs it on your Google+ page, you are able to respond only to that user, and this helps in reputation management and branding.  In addition, one way to start getting noticed on Google+ is to “+1″ other people’s posts, which not only gets your avatar out there, but also is a nice thing to do.

Make sure to add the Google+ button prominently on your website, mobile website, and newsletter.  It should be near the Facebook and Twitter icons. Google+ users can then click this button to +1 your web page content.  This will ultimately help to improve your SEO and could increase your website traffic. It is easy to copy and paste the code into your web pages.

You can also download the Google+ app so that you can use Google+ from your mobile device.  However, as of this post, page administrators can not post via the mobile app yet, you have to be the creator of the stream to post.

What and When to Post

Just like Facebook or Twitter, you should plan to regularly post updates on Google+ with content that your customers would find interesting.  You can share content from other people here as well.  Remember that Google+ is for socializing, not totally marketing, and you will drive people away if you only make posts about your services and products there.  People want to join your circle in order to have conversations with you, get coupons, or other information.  They also expect you to respond to their questions promptly on Google+.  If you want to engage more people, make sure to “post to public” so everyone can find your content.

You will want to add keywords to your posts by creating a title for them, and then adding in the URL you want to link to. You can also add hashtags to your posts if that makes sense.

Make sure to turn on the “authorship” for your content, so Google begins to note that you are the creator of your own content. In order to do this, click your name in Google Plus to show your profile and then in the upper right corner look for the “Edit Profile” link. Once you are there, look on the right for “contributor to” and click that link.  Now you can type in the URLs of the websites where you want to claim the content you have written.

Social Etiquette

You will also want to make sure you can respond in a timely manner when someone adds a comment to your post.  If they +1 and share your post, it’s a good idea to thank them.  If they +1 your post, a nice acknowledgement is to add them to your circles.

Google+ has a function (@name) that allows you to ask people to respond to your posts.  It is one way to put your content in front of people that will likely contribute to the discussion but it should be used with care, because you may seem too demanding, and loose followers by overusing it. You can add people who frequently comment on your posts to a circle you use to start debates.

Create comments with more information than “great post”.  Your comments should add value or spark more of discussion.

Using Google Hangouts 

Anyone with a Google+ login can create a hangout or join a public hangout. Hangouts are live videoconferences where users can interact.  Similar to hangouts in Facebook that use Skype technology, Google+ Hangouts also allow the conference session to be published to YouTube almost instantaneously.

Don’t worry if no one comes to your hangout right away.  You can send anyone in your circles an invitation to hangout and join you.  The first time they hangout, they will download an app that allows them to video and chat, as well as screen share.  There is a  Google video that explains hangouts.  Businesses can use hangouts for question and answer sessions, sales calls, customer service interaction, networking events, concerts, meetings, and many other useful sessions.  Since Google records all the participants in a hangout, businesses can check the Google+ profiles of the attendees and add them to their circles.

As more and more people begin using Google+ the opportunities for businesses will grow exponentially.

In order to promote your page, you will want to follow as many influential people as you can by adding them to your circles.  Circles can be segmented to keep your followers and influencers separate. You should encourage the people in your circles to share your page with their own circles. You should customize your discussions to your different circles.  For instance, if a certain customer has a complaint and airs it on your Google+ page, you are able to respond only to that user, and this helps in reputation management and branding.  In addition, one way to start getting noticed on Google+ is to “+1″ other people’s posts, which not only gets your avatar out there, but also is a nice thing to do.

Make sure to add the Google+ button prominently on your website, mobile website, and newsletter.  It should be near the Facebook and Twitter icons. Google+ users can then click this button to +1 your web page content.  This will ultimately help to improve your SEO and could increase your website traffic. It is easy to 

You can share this page with up to 50 other administrators as well by clicking on the gear at the top right, then settings, then looing for the manage link on the left.

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As of yesterday, Google launched an update  “Search Plus Your World”, a continuation of Google+ integration into Google’s other products.

You’re going to start seeing automatically personalized results (to a greater degree, as Google has already started to do this) with signals drawn from your Google+ account and Circles, highlighting things you or your friends have shared.  These personalized matches will appear alongside your “normal” Google search results. Google will also start to pull photos shared via Google+ or Picasa—even if these images have been marked as private, they’ll show up (but only be visible to you).

What is Google Doing?

Google’s search has always been about putting the best and most relevant results in front of you—sometimes this means from the public web, sometimes this may be content and personal information shared by yourself or the people you know and care about.  Although Google search is currently still limited to public web pages created by people you haven’t met, Google’s goal is to start bringing your own personal world, people you know and personalized relevant information into search.  Google wants you to be able to find your own stuff on the web, including your contacts and the things they’ve shared with you, also people you don’t know but might want to as well.

Here are three new features to watch out for:

1. Profiles:  You’ll be able to find profiles via both autocomplete and results, enabling you to find people you’re close to or who you might be interested in following.
2. People and Pages:  Google will help you find other users Google+ page related to your topics of interest—you’ll find a community behind almost every query.
3. Personal:  Google will help you find information just for you—Google+ posts and photos.  Both your own and ones shared with you will be found in results pages.

A Brief Example…

Here’s an example of how the new Google search will work.  Say you are running a query for a recent movie – for most people, a search like this will bring up film information, a book if relevant, movie times, videos, sometimes even fan sites.  In addition, your Google results may now display Picasa albums and photo results from friends albums, should they have gone to the premier, taken pictures, or shared any related content and blog posts via Google+.  All these will show up in your results too.

Foreshadowing…

This isn’t such a big deal as of now, but it does foreshadow a bigger Google change in the works – Google is transforming into a search engine for your stuff—your images, your content, your writing, and sometimes personal results.

This is starting off small – as mentioned, Google+’s integration with Picasa.  But soon you’ll start to see results from Gmail, Music, Voice, Contacts, Google Docs, etc… Should you go to Google and type a search for whatever you’re looking for, you’ll stat to see your own information and content displayed alongside the web results you’re familiar with.

As of yet, Google has not confirmed any of this and a broader and more personal search functionality is still a ways away.

Here are several other changes that are being introduced now:

Google is promoting certain Google+ users within search results—if you search “music”, you’ll see profiles of prominent musicians—and you’ll have the ability to add these people to your circles.  This is one way Google is promoting Google+ to users who have yet to sign up.

Several new features and options have also been included—a new tab will let you select “Search Plus Your World” and you can toggle back and forth between unpersonalized, “old fashioned” results and the new.  Google also makes it possible to opt out of the new experience entirely.  However, this SSL is now default for all users who are signed in and personalizing results.

Just to be clear, Google has been personalizing results for a while and social integration with search isn’t unique to Google—Bing’s partnership with Facebook has allowed them to display Facebook data in results and will share your friends statuses and posts within search results.

The future.

The key takeaway is that Google continues to improve at figuring out when to display socially relevant data—they want to show you content not because your friend posted it but because it’s actually relevant and helpful.  This is just a taste of what we expect Google will continue to roll out – Google+ integration will continue, and more of Google’s services will be accessible via search.

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1.    Google & Bing win over “spammy” websites with the Google Panda Update.
In February of 2011, Google’s Panda update was developed to minimize low-quality and duplicate content that ranked highly in search engine results using unethical methods. Today SEOs and Internet marketers everywhere are still adhering to Google’s algorithm, which has affected 12% of web search results in the U.S. (a higher percentage than any of Google’s past algorithm changes). The threat that content and linking farms have faced this year is illustrated in an issue of New Scientist magazine, explaining how the major search engines have cracked down on spam.

2.    Yahoo search results powered by Bing.
The highly buzzed about merger of these two top search engines finally came to fruition this year. To challenge the dominance of Google, Bing now powers all web, image, and video searches on Yahoo, while Yahoo still has control of other features such as Yahoo Mail and Yahoo News. To figure out what your search rankings look like in the new Yahoo search results, consult Bing rankings, as they will be similar. It’s also doubly important now to have your website set up in Bing Webmaster Tools.

3.    Google+ Impact on search.
As Google+ grows in popularity, impact is being shown in natural search results – and ranked fairly highly. This behavior is expected to increase in 2012 as Google+ continually rolls out new features that allow businesses to become more interactive. So far Google+ has had an underwhelming effect on the social media market, but its future significance is found as the whole of Google increasingly becomes more social.

4.    Death of Yahoo Site Explorer.
This came as unfortunate news as Yahoo Site Explorer was a popular free tool for SEOs to find various metrics (quantity and quality of back link information) pointed out against any particular website. SEOs now need to find paid databases of link information such as SEOmoz and others.

5.    Merge of Google Local and organic search.
Not having your business listed in Google Places can now damage website rankings in natural search results. In 2011 there was a 20% marketshare increase due to a large percentage of searchers using mobile devices for local search queries. In addition when a search is performed on Google Maps, organic search results for that query are also listed.

6.    Introduction of Google Speech and improvement of suggestions.
Google Speech was introduced on the Chrome browser and on the Google mobile app, allowing searchers to speak their queries out loud by clicking a microphone icon or simply holding the mobile device up to their ear. While the speech recognition itself improved, SEOs also began studying how people search when speaking. For example, searchers use more descriptive language speaking than typing.  

7.    Death of Digg.
Digg was at one time one of the most popular social bookmarking sites and was considered the future of online content discovery. Yet its popularity fell once they released a new interface. Reddit, another social link sharing site, has picked up traffic by 230% in 12 months after Digg’s end.

8.    Google Query Encryption Update.
Google has promoted more secure Internet browsing by introducing updated query encryption for users searching while signed into their Google account. While providing enhanced user privacy, Google Analytics numbers are inaccurate – since cookies aren’t tracked with the update, keyword data is lost. Many marketers are turning to alternative web analytic programs.

9.    New version of Google Analytics.
Toward the end of the year Google rolled out a more flexible and advanced version of Google Analytics. Google has incorporated an advanced dashboard facility, keyword clouds, real time search results, integrated Google Webmaster and analytics tools, event tracking and many more features. Some marketers do not agree with the new interface, but it should improve as more data and features are tweaked.

10.  Duckduckgo.com and Blekko Search Engines gain market share.
In 2011 these two search engines have made their presence felt. Through the year Blekko has improved its indexing system, come out with more slash tags, and also a new layout. Duckduckgo.com has a user-friendly interface and has adopted a no-tracking privacy policy. Both search engines – perhaps climbing above AOL and Ask – claim to be spam-free to make a positive impression on Internet users.

Of course there were plenty of other notable stories– Google has claimed to have made about 500 updates just this year. As search engine marketers, these are the top changes that have influenced the industry greatest. 2012 will bring about new changes, new search channels, and new objectives that we’re eager to tackle. What do you think should be in the Top 10 biggest organic search changes of 2011? Comment below!

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