So we’re still trying to understand. All we can think about is a sudden increase in traffic from Australia as it increased significantly recently thanks to its popularity now that we live here. Vogue Australia mentioned it on its home page recently, but Google probably  didn’t notice that since the Adsense department is different from Search.

The very reason for this ban remains a mystery and I don’t think we’ll ever know why. I attribute it to Google playing God again, deepening my strong antipathy for what it’s become: worldwide digital evil represented by pretentious geeks whose ultimate goal is to control your online habits and profit from them, and who will not hesitate to obliterate your site from the worldwide web if their mathematically-driven algorithms tell them it’s the right thing to do, no questions asked.

Dear beauty bloggers and bloggers of all kinds, it is my duty to tell you not to link out to these sites. Blog aggregators are asking for what we call in our SEO jargon “link juice”. Once they have enough links, their PageRank will rise, and so will their relevance to the eyes of Google. As a result, there is a risk in the long term that Google finds their site before it finds yours when users look for things – i.e. they want to grab what we call long tail search traffic – your search traffic. Why are they doing that? To sell ads and make money.

So don’t be fooled, these blog aggregators will never bring any significant traffic to your site. Because their primary aim is to sell ads, not to bring traffic to your site. On top of this, Google is increasingly identifying their content as duplicate, therefore making them irrelevant and invisible – which is why they need hundreds of blogs linking to them, in the hope to be able to beat Google. However their plot is becoming too obvious to search engines.

My word of advice? Don’t bother with them, they are time wasters, and they WILL decrease the power of your blog if you link out to them.

Today, when checking the ranking of my friends at Après Restaurant, a French restaurant in Sydney for which I did some SEO, I noticed that Google had changed a few things around when displaying results for a commercially-related searches when the name of a place is part of the search term.

The map showing the results is now located on the right sidebar, above Adwords, and stays visible as you scroll down the page. Google is evidently trying to emphasise its Maps, of high relevance when the name of a place is part of the search term.

I also noted a revision of their algorithm. First, Google now displays links to customer reviews from more than its own Google Places. Second, preference is given to businesses that have registered their presence through Google Places and it seems that businesses that have pictures as part of their Google Places profile are also given a priority.

Finally, there are some major differences between Chrome and Safari. The former currently shows Adwords links and the latter doesn’t. There are also some differences in the SERPs when comparing both browsers. Overall it seems that Chrome showcases what to expect across all browsers when the whole process is deployed across the board.

A major improvement from Google that highlights the ever-increasing importance of local results.

Local Search using Chrome

Local Search using Safari

Google somehow missed the boat by poorly integrating Twitter into its search results. They are kept at the bottom of the results page and only available to Gmail users. Once again Google have been egocentric in their social search offering. Their integration of Twitter is more a display of technological prowess than social vision in the field of search.

It is not in Google’s interest to integrate search. Their business model is based on one-click-and-you’re-out – Google wants you to use the site as often as possible and as quickly as possible. With this in mind, Google also needs to make as much money from you as possible, which is exactly what happened with Google Instant, making Adword results prevail more than natural results.

Bing’s move to integrate Facebook and enable users to sign in by using their Facebook account is a bold and very smart one. Bing has always been about usability, as shown by their search applications for hotels and flights, for example. This move marks a natural evolution of search and a full integration of everyone’s social network – half a billion of us so far, and still growing.

What’s in it for Facebook?

Only 4% of worldwide searches are performed using Bing, and quite frankly, Facebook doesn’t need Bing to pursue its growth or cement its position as the world’s prevailing social network. Facebook doesn’t need Bing, full stop, so what’s really behind this partnership? It can’t just be for users or as favour from Mark Zuckerberg to Bing. This is big business after all, not philanthropy.

My take is that the next logical step to this partnership will be the integration of search within Facebook, proudly brought to you by Bing. This win-win situation would keep Facebook users on the site and would boost Bing’s popularity and ad revenue share. Once on Facebook you would be able to perform a search with social, sponsored and natural results displayed within Facebook.

More than a social network, Facebook could then become the world’s first and largest Social Engine.

What does it mean for SEOs?

Pure SEO will not survive unless it integrates comprehensive social media strategies and SEO agencies will have to become integrated Digital Media Agencies. A domain currently left to techies, SEO will pursue its natural move towards being an integral part of Digital Marketing, a sphere in which it’s always belonged but so far hasn’t been given a real place.

Google’s claim for this enhancement is that it radically improves the speed of search whilst not losing the relevance of the results – see their post on the official Google blog here. While their claim on speed is undeniable, I do disagree on the relevance factor, for Google has omitted one very important aspect of this search “enhancement” – its business purpose.

While I was impressed by the speed and the actual display of technology behind the feature, I immediately noticed that it completely changed my search behaviour and, more relevantly, the way my eyes cast the screen and visualise the displayed results. The majority of us don’t touch-type, and as you enter your search query your eyes are immediately drawn to the results present at the top of the page. You now probably start to get my point. These top-of-the-page results are all Sponsored links, i.e. paid advertising. From this perspective, nothing has changed, Google sponsored links were always displayed at the top of the page however I believe that the user’s propensity to click on them will exponentially increase with the introduction of Google Instant. This is reinforced by the fact that screens are getting smaller – not bigger as one would think – as laptop ownership now exceeds desktop. A smaller screen will immediately display the results that are right at the top: the mighty Sponsored links. And to further cement my argument, it is certainly not serendipitously that Google hinted coming improvements to its Google Adwords interface for advertisers. Below is a screenshot of the results displayed on 13″ laptop screen. Note the prevalence of sponsored links over “natural” results.

It’s important to remember that Google is not a public service. While I think that, given the monopoly it has acquired over search and search marketing, Google should be regulated as such, it remains a public company which purpose is to raise its market value, which it does through blatantly abusing its monopoly on worldwide search. My advice? Use Bing instead, it has better functionalities.

Well, now I know what I’m doing tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m not doing any SEO. Tomorrow I’m going to go snorkeling.  Life is way too short to be looking for job opportunities in robots.txt file (surely this guy must live somewhere really boring. Who has time for that? Who even thinks about that??).

Anyway, it looks like mother nature decided to reward me with 2 dolphins. So I’m definitely going to go for a dip and remind myself why I live here.

However what this story tells me is that there is room for a new form or PR – something less traditional than the traditional PR that sends out press releases and pray for them to be published and hope for a link.

This something is called content – original, copious, keyword-rich and well-written content. After all it is definitely a good thing if my website is mentioned and linked from bbc.co.uk, but it is still better if dozens or hundreds of people are talking about me and linking to me from good articles in their websites.

PR agencies are going to have to face the fact that sending out press releases won’t be enough. The landscape of digital information is changing and more people now trust independent sources like blogs than they trust the traditional media websites. As a result, PR agencies are going to have to change and adapt their strategies considerably in order to establish relationships with bloggers who are gradually taking more and more space on Google’s search results and in the digital media scene.