Articles and News
ARE YOU BEING SEEN IN ALL THE BEST PLACES? June 20, 2012 (0 comments)
Reston, VA—Comscore, the digital media analytics firm, last week released its latest monthly rankings of search engine use. To no great surprise, Google’s various sites remain the 800-pound gorilla in this category. Google Sites command a 66.7% share of market, compared to runner-up Microsoft, whose sites garnered a 15.4% share of market.
Yahoo!’s sites are used 13.4% of the time, while Ask Network garnered a 3.0% share of the search market and former Goliath AOL struggles along with only 1.5% of the search market. 68.9% of searches carried organic search results powered by Google, while 25.6% of searches were powered by Bing.
To make sure your content can easily be found by Google's web crawlers—and in turn be put at the top of the results page—follow these tips from The Centurion’s digital marketing series by Jeff Arnold of Focus Business Management.
Still the 800-pound gorilla of search engines.
Separately, three weeks ago Google introduced its new Google+ Local pages, which replaces Google Places pages and integrates with the new Google+ social network. Users can access it through Search, Google Maps, or the new Local tab within Google+.
According to this article on Small Business Trends.com, the change, though seemingly small, will have a big impact on businesses. They now are the business’ new default Google profile, housing all important information about that business, and are the first thing users will find when they do a search for that business.
On the plus side, not only are some experts already saying the Google Local business pages are more attractive and easier to use than Facebook brand pages, but they also give business owners a much more social way to interact with consumers and they integrate the uniform Zagat (acquired by Google last year) system of ratings for business. On the downside, if it could be called that, unlike Facebook’s conversion to the Timeline format, you have no choice in the matter here. You will—if you haven’t already—been switched to the new format, and you will need to go in and do some tweaking to be sure your listing is as comprehensive and up-to-date as you’d like.
New Google Local listings show Zagat ratings along with a pinpointed location. Photo: BHawkins.
For a complete rundown on the new Google Local pages and what to do with them, click here.