Thursday, September 26, 2013

Hummingbird: Google Algorithm Update

Hummingbird update today (9/26/2013). Google announced that this update will be optimizing for Voice Search and long search queries. According to Moz "Hummingbird has been compared to Caffeine, and seems to be a core algorithm update that may power changes to semantic search and the Knowledge Graph for months to come." Amid Singhal, search executive of Google, said that users can now be comfortable searching for long queries instead of breaking the thought into keywords. I think this is a real game changer for Google and another step to help those who were left behind in using their search.

Another thought for me is that Hummingbird tells me more that SEO is not dying - instead, it's just moving to a path towards Content Marketing. The reason is that Google keeps on telling SEO's to create compelling content and with this update, it beats how SEO's battle it out on a keyword basis. Google hasn't announced how this update would affect sites that primarily rely on target keywords but nothing has changed as to how websites should do their SEO and content marketing: Link Naturally and Provide Great Content.

How do you think this update can impact you and/or your business?

Friday, September 20, 2013

Promoted Pins: Pinterest Will Start Showing Ads and Going Mobile

I've got an email yesterday from Pinterest.


Pinterest has been around for 4 years now and now they are taking their baby step towards monetizing. Yes, they will be putting their years of effort to leverage on ROI and mobile usage.

The first tests of ads will be in the categories feeds and search results. For instance you search for "Men's Fashion", you might see a store selling men's clothing nearby - like how Promoted Tweets work.

A lot of comments from netizens spurred from this, mostly negative. Some said that Pinterest just signed their death wish and some say that this is goodbye for them using the pinning platform. A few number of neutral responses say that as long as Pinterest will do it in a "not intrusive and spammy" way, they have no problem against it.

It is a fact that successful platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Dropbox start with free service before they introduced Twitter Promoted Tweets, Facebook Ads and Dropbox Plans. Little do most people know that in the end, it is all just business - and all business have costs to carry on their shoulders. Having to make an exceptional innovation and exquisite UI/UX platform should not be expected "free all the time" and/or there's always a price to pay for something "more".

At the end of the email it was signed by a guy named "Ben" who is obviously represented by Ben Silbermann, the CEO of Pinterest.