Last Week in Search: Google Hides Referral Data, Fixes Google+ User Gripes & Leaks New Gmail
On Tuesday Google announced on their blog changes to their search product designed to improve security and privacy of searches. Any time a user is logged into a Google account, searches performed will be SSL encrypted, which while protecting search privacy, also means that webmasters will no longer have access to a sizable portion of organic referral keyword data.
Google says the change is designed to “recognise the growing importance of protecting the personalised search experience for signed-in users†but the search community isn’t buying it. Search News Central went as far as declaring war on Google in an article that called out Google’s ‘privacy’ excuse, saying the only reason they implemented this change was to shut out competing ad networks. The exclusion of this change to paid search is also leaves a bad taste in the mouths of webmasters, who will now need to make a further push into paid search for the same referral data they’ve relied on for years.
Google was caught out showing off its new Gmail interface in a leaked YouTube video that was quickly yanked from the site. Unfortunately for Google the cat was already out of the bag and the video demonstration of Gmail’s new interface and features has now been reproduced across the Internet and re-uploaded to YouTube. Take a look at Gmail’s new design in the below video.
Google also rolled out some changes in mobile search advertising designed to make smartphone apps easier to find, download and use from within mobile search. The changes are essentially an ad platform for mobile apps that allows mobile searchers to be redirected to either their app store with paid searches or to a destination within apps. The new features drive mobile user experience further to the app platform and makes it far easier for app developers to implement a paid search strategy without the headaches experienced in the past. With Apple’s App Store search not cutting it anymore due to the sheer volume of apps available, Google’s new mobile search advertising platform is a great way for app developers to cut through the noise.
Google announced even more features and let slip some forthcoming changes to their entire product line at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Fransisco last week. Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra took to the stage for a 30 minute interview that revealed some minor, albeit long-awaited, changes to Google+. The two Googlers announced Google Apps support for Google+ was coming in the next few days, that Google+ brand pages will be following suit very soon and that Google+ will be supporting pseudonyms for usernames in the immediate future. These three fixes alone have been users main gripes with Google+ since its launch earlier this year and should help the social network in its battle for users. Watch the full Web 2.0 Summit interview with Sergey and Vic below. Warning: the interview clocks in at around 30 minutes.
Google Analytics also got a set of new features at the Web 2.0 Summit to help webmasters track what happens on their sites. Analytics is set to go visual with a new flow visualisation tool designed to show webmasters how users are browsing their site all the way from their point of entry to the way they exit. The new flow visualisation tool will help webmasters improve their website’s page structure to increase time spent by users on their site. Google’s Senior Vice President for Advertising Susan Wojcicki said the new Analytics features will be rolled out to users in a few weeks.
Search Engine Watch ran an excellent guide early in the week on how different social signals are being used by each search engine and how to make use of these changes in your SEO strategies. The guide shows how +1’s are being rolled out across Google, how Bing makes use of it’s access to Facebook’s fire hose of social data and what you can do to build your authority to take advantage of these relatively new social signals.
Computerworld tied together some of Google’s Web 2.0 Summit announcements and took an in-depth look at Google’s push into the social enterprise market with the incoming overhaul of Google Apps and Google+ integration. It’s a fascinating read and gives a good idea of where Google+ can really out-innovate Facebook, who have traditionally been more focused on user experience rather than enterprise social solutions. The success of Yammer shows the enterprise social space has huge potential for growth and Google+ is the perfect product to capitalise on that growth.
That’s it for Last Week in Search. What do you think of Google new products? Will Google’s removal of referral data for logged in users affect your website? Let us know in the comments below!
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
