Knowing the directions Google is going in earlier rather than later will allow you to be pro-active and have to plan for the changing future of search engine marketing; something that will put you far ahead of your competitors because while they’re trying to figure out what’s happening you’ll already be taking their customers away!

Whether you like it or not, Google is such a huge and critical part of the Web. They have control over virtually everyone’s online business and Web site.

They’ve been releasing, both officially and unofficially, their plans and “predictions” for 2010 and you need to pay attention.

Here’s what they’ve said…

Google will continue to expand in many directions as once.

Search More Types of Information

Look for them to be searching new types of data (you’ve seen that in the past with them searching Gmail, books, patents, and the beginnings of searching images and video).

They are forever on the lookout to search more types and if you have taken advantage of those and your competitors haven’t you’ll get a ranking boost that they won’t

Better Understanding of Content

Google has been adding to its understanding of content (and search queries) over the years (think spelling, synonyms, etc.) but they will be doing that by having more semantic understanding of the content, that is, better understand what the words actually mean in context rather than as just individual words looked at separately.

What this means is that it will be harder to scam Google with content that is created just to get high search results and, also, that Google will do a better job of providing search results (so your AdWords and AdSense ads will be better targeted).

I, and others, have been saying for a long time that the best thing is to have real content and that will become even more true as Google becomes “smarter” at reading Web pages and queries.

It will also allow Google to be able to handle “harder” more complex queries, ones they can’t accurately handle now.

Make sure you are the one providing lots of real, great content and let your competitors waste their time trying to game the system.

Getting Better Data

Just a look at Google’s “Squared” project will show you that they are very serious about being able to get “good data” from the Web.

For example, Google Squared, takes some category and creates a “square” of information based on it, automatically fetching and organizing facts from across the Web.

So then search will provide faster and better results.

They are still working on it but it’s sort of fun and interesting to build “squares” and you can come across some things you hadn’t thought of or that spark good ideas.

A Faster Web

I previously mentioned that Google was looking to use load speed of a Web page as part of their search results.

Expect that to happen in 2010.

Google big shots, including Larry Page, want a faster Web and they are in a position to give a lot of positive and negative reinforcement to achieve that.

Basically, if your page loads slowly, or eventually more slowly than it should, then you won’t the get “ranking points” that your competitor whose page load like lightning will.

This is a big problem in Internet Marketing because the quality of the code of more sales and squeeze pages is truly hideous.

I’ve take PLR sales pages and changed the load time from 30 seconds to 2 seconds (and the perceived time difference to be even faster) just by “fixing” the underlying code.

Sure it may be easy to create in FrontPage or NVU or whatever and I understand the importance of getting something done and not creating an elegantly coded Web page but the quality of the pages are very bad and Google will start punishing you for it by poorer search results positioning that you would get if that page loaded quickly.

Google has created a number of tools to help you do this, you can find them at their Speed Site, there are articles, tools and a forum.

These tools will analyze your page telling you areas of slowness and they even have some tools to help you make your pages faster like creating properly compressed and optimized graphic images and shrinking down your JavaScript code.

Here is a quick video to show you one of their tools in use:

They also are providing some optimized JavaScript code for anyone to use which will save you money getting it developed and save you time.

Do you want to risk your ranking on the speed of your Web pages?

Particularly when the problem can be easy to fix or not do wrong in the first place!

Get ahead by doing this now, your current prospect s and customers will love you for it and Google will show you love in 2010 by giving you additional “ranking points” that you lazy or clueless competitors will not be getting.

Caffeine

I talked about Google’s Caffeine in a prior blog post.

Google is starting to roll Caffeine out. They’ll be doing it in one of their data centers this year and rolling it out over 2010.

In case you didn’t know, Google has thousands of servers, spread out in numerous data centers.

When you do a search it goes to one of those data centers, they try to optimize it to be th one that will give you the fastest results (which may be the one physically closest to you or the one that currently has the most available bandwidth and servers).

So you might start seeing Caffeine results instead of the normal Google results and you’ll see it more and more over time although many people may not notice a difference (your ranking may change though)

Read the above blog post to get a better understanding of how you can take advantage of the changes Caffeine will bring.

Conclusion

As you can see, in 2010, Google will continue to evolve.

Speed of page loading and great content will become even more important to search results positioning.

Different and more types of information will be searching and show up in results.

Google will be smarter about the content so content meant to trick them will be penalized.

Finally, Caffeine will be rolled out; this will be a big “slap” to some but a big boost to those who take advantage of it.

While these are how Google is changing, remember that other search engines change in similar ways to better compete so they will impact you whichever search engines you focus on.

Also, don’t say you use AdWords so it doesn’t matter.

Google always rolls out their changes to everything they have, as applicable, so if your AdWords destination pages are slow expect even more penalty, if the ads is tricky and confusing Google will understand it better and punish you, if… I think you get the point

Are you ready for these changes?

Are you going to act or react?

Take advantage of what Google offers and the dollars they can bring to your bottom line!

Please leave me a comment below with your thoughts and opinions.

Talk soon,

David

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.GetYourBonusesNow.com
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. Don’t forget to retweet this! Use the button on the page or just Tweet this:
Google Version 2010: How Google’s Upcoming Changes Impact You at http://streetguidetowebtraffic.com/blog/using-google/google-2010 (via @DavidHusnian)

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This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Google Version 2010: How Google’s Upcoming Changes Impact You

Anyway, Google recently released a new search tool they call the “Wonder Wheel” and it is more than a cool new tool, it may just change how keyword-related research is done.

It definitely is a great tool, particularly when you’re looking for niche ideas, product ideas, relationships and things like that — or if you prefer a visual look rather than just a list of numbers — and the potential this brings to the direction of research and research tools is really awesome.

Now, using this is not as fast or easy if you are just looking for a whole bunch of good keywords to use; of course, the paid tools like Keyword Elite, Market Samurai and others are even better because they save you time by organizing things nicely and do it much more quickly than you could.

But what Google’s Wonder Wheel can do by showing the relationships is where you get the real value.

Back to Google’s Wonder Wheel, here is a picture of one so you get a sense of what it looks like. Here is what a Wonder Wheel looks like on a search for “Web Traffic”:

As you can see, a “Wonder Wheel” takes your search phrase and put it in the center and the most important “topics” related to that are shown as “spokes” of the Wonder Wheel.

Before we get into this more just take a minute to look at what Google is telling us.

Google is saying that the 5 most important subtopics of “Web Traffic” are (1) instant web traffic; (2) web traffic rankings; (3) targeted web traffic; (4) social bookmarking; and (5) monetizing web traffic.

Already your brain should be working and you should have learned something. Maybe you didn’t understand the importance of social bookmarking before or you find it intriguing that web traffic rankings is so important or you get an idea for a new product or…

You’ll also notice that those spokes are links and you can keep drilling down, for example, if I click on “monetize web traffic” this is what Google shows:

Here you see that the 6 most important subtopics of “monetize web traffic”, you can continue drill down getting “longer tail” until you get what you need (or have so many ideas you brain explodes

How to Access the Wonder Wheel

Google has made it really easy to access the Wonder Wheel, it is now just a search options along with some other interesting options.

To access just go to Google and do a regular search, one you might do normally many times a day, something like:

When you do the search you’ll see results like this:

Notice the “Show options…” link? Well click it and you’ll see:

You can see it is the same search with lots of nice new options. We’re going to focus on the second on from the bottom, the “Wonder wheel”.

When you click that link, to change to view, you’ll see this:

The obvious thing to notice is the Wonder Wheel but the less obvious thing is that you don’t see any AdWords sponsored links just the free, organic search links.

As I showed above you can drill down, for example:

And clicking to drill down some more we see:

Why Should You Care?

So you might be thinking “Yeah, so?”

Well, what this does is show the intent of the searchers. For example, if someone searches for “monetize web traffic” the most likely things (that is, their intent) they are looking for is the 5 subtopics shown above.

One of the ABSOLUTE MOST IMPORTANT things you need to know is what the person who is searching is looking for, that is, their intent. This can’t be overemphasized.

If you know what is in their head and you can enter their internal conversation you are so much likely to a sale or on your list.

I don’t recall the statistics but it may be a 3 digit improvement, even if it is just 100% improvement that is doubling your sales by doing nothing more than understanding the intent of the prospects and, just as important, making them realize that your understand.

Notice, no more traffic, no additional cost, just more sales and Google is giving you deep knowledge into the historical basis for searches and we are talking about more searches than McDonald’s has sold hamburgers! That’s a lot of data…

What You Should Do?

You can use this for lots of things, I’m still exploring it myself but here are some of the things I’ve found were easy and, truthfully, obvious ways to use the Wonder Wheel.

Clean Up Your Act

Browse around on your important keywords and see what the intent of the prospects who use those keywords is, not what you thought it was but what Google is telling you, based upon huge amounts of actual searches, the intent was.

If the intent is not what you expected then you need to either (1) target different keywords or (2) change you landing pages to make sure you are addressing the prospects intent, their desires, not what you think they are or what you want them to be.

This can make a huge difference in your business, HUGE.

Consultants and market researchers charge 4, 5, 6 even 7 figures to get this type of information and Google is giving you all this for free; admittedly the consultants help you understand, analyze and act on the information but a big part of their time spent (and the subsequent cost) is actually getting the information.

Find New Niches

This is such a great tool for idea research, for example, my niece is an avid photographer (see http://www.takefamilypictures.com/) so I thought I’d look at photography, here is what I found:
Immediately I am struck by “photography history”, I wouldn’t have imagined it was one of the main intents of searchers for photography. Now this could be my naivety and lack of knowledge of photography but this piqued my interest as maybe a niche with potential.

So I looked and found:
I don’t want to do niche research here and now, I’ll save that for another time, but my initial look shows me this is something that goes into my journal as something to follow up on.

And I probably wouldn’t have seen it if I didn’t have the Wonder Wheel, just think what it can show you as you drill down more!

Do Competitive Analysis

You’ll notice as you use the Wonder Wheel that the right column updates itself everything you click on one of the links; it does a normal Google search and shows them there.

You can use this to more quickly do a competitive analysis, finding competing products and potential partners and affiliate opportunities (nothing wrong with using someone else’s product as a back end to your own and picking up some nice commissions from it).

Conclusion

Google’s Wonder Wheel has the potential to make the ways we do niche and keyword research change dramatically.

While the user interface isn’t a Google invention — it has been around for several decades at least — it is the first consumer mass market example of it I have ever seen and is a very good Version 1.0 product.

Even the information isn’t new, Google has been providing it for some months now under their “related searches” section in many search results pages.

But the combination of the information and the way of viewing that information is where the power lies.

The information it provides, in a simple visual format, about the intent of the searcher and prospect is invaluable if used properly; it alone is makes the tool well worth using.

Using it to look at your existing keywords should also show you what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong and guide you to making changes that could have a huge impact on your bottom line.

Using it also to find promising new niches as well as potential partners and affiliate opportunities are WONDERful additional side benefits; sorry I couldn’t resist

You should also play around with the other options and, in the future, I’ll look at some of them but don’t wait for me give it a go yourself!

Leave a comment and tell me what you think and how you see the Wonder Wheel helping you. I’d love to hear about things I haven’t thought of yet (and, of course, you get another link to your site!)

Talk soon,

David
The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer

http://www.8-8-8Sale.com

http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com

http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com

O.Y. If you’d like some good niche finder tools, one I use Micro Niche Finder and Market Samurai. For keyword research I use Market Samurai and Keyword Elite.

O.O.Y. If you want to know more about getting Web Traffic or want Web Traffic products you can sell just go to 8-8-8 Sale’s Getting Traffic site; use the coupon code SGTWTSpecial to get 27% off just for readers of Street Guide to Web Traffic.

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Google’s WONDERful New Search Tool

If you haven’t been using Google Insights you really should check it out at http://www.google.com/insights/search/

As the name suggests, Google Insights is a powerful tool to give you different insights into specific markets and with the latest round of updates it took a big leap forward.

I won’t be explaining how to use Google Insights here but we’ll take a quick look at the new updates and how they can help you find more targeted buyers.

New Filters

One thing you’ll notice if you’ve used Insights before is that now there are a bunch of new filters that let you drill down into looking as more specific detail.

Previously, Insights only showed information about the standard Google Web search but now they have will show you Image search, News search and Product search.

How does this help you?

Image Search

Right off the top of my head, I can see how having Image search, which shows what images people are looking for, can direct you to finding products that people might be interested.

For example, I just did an image search on baseball because the baseball season in the U.S. has just started.

The results had “bat” and “baseball bat” as the 2 most popular image searches and when you click to drill down you can see which bats are the top bats being search and which are the ones that are rising fast.

If you sell that type of thing you now know how to better target your marketing and if you don’t, you now know some “hot” products that you can get into to make some quick cash.

Looking further down the list I saw that baseball logos was the 5th most popular image search and drilling down you can see that Yankees logos are pretty hot with the Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs and the Atlanta Braves as hot rising stars.

Again, if you have or if you can become an affiliate for (or even just find eBay products) this shows you ways to find hot products for some quick cash.

News Search

Do a News search on keywords in your niche and you can quickly find topics for articles and blog posts. These will be things that people are already highly interested in making your content more highly relevant to your customers and prospects.

Product Search

Like Image search, a Product search can give you insights into products in your niche that are currently in high demand or point out niches that might be good for you to enter.

Be sure you look at the Rising Searches to see what is up and coming so you can be ahead of your competitors.

Other Search Filters

In addition to showing you searches beyond the Web search, Google also added the ability to really drill down into specific regions.

For example, the U.S. is divided into 50 states and the states are divided into smaller things like counties and other things depending upon the state.

Google Insights now lets you drill down to that level to see what it popular in pretty much any specific region. In the past they just drilled down into major cities.

Another great new filter is a time based filter.

While Insights showed you trends over time it was basically showing you results since 2004. Now you can search just the last 7 days, last 30 days, last 90 days, last 12 months, pick a specific year (as long as it is this year and last), or even search between specific dates (again currently only for this year and last year).

As you can imagine, this really helps you focus specifically on your needs getting better, more detailed information that you could get before.

Other Changes

There are a number of other nice additions like better drill down capabilities and the new categories percentages.

The category percentages are really quite useful because they show you the intent of the people searching for the topic.

For example, since we saw baseball bats were very popular before, doing a Web search for “bats” shows that 25-50% of the searches are in the Sports category, with the rest of the search split between Entertainment, Local, Lifestyles. Shopping and Home & Garden.

You want to make sure your keywords are matching the searches so this is quite useful and you can even click on the categories and drill down further.

For example, if I click on Sports you’ll see that it says Baseball: 25-50%, Sporting Goods: 25-50%, Cricket: 10-25%, Racquet Sports: 0-10%

You can drill down and slice and dice all this in so many different ways letting what you see guide you in what directions to look at.

This can be a really powerful way to look at data and starts really moving into providing online business intelligence.

If you aren’t using Google Insights you really should look at it and if you are you’ll really enjoy the new updates.

I’d love to hear how you are using Google Insights so leave a comment and help us all (and get a link to your site!)

Talk soon,

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Fantastic New Changes to Google Insights