A roundup of some of the most interesting Google updates and industry news for January 2012.

1. Industry Updates
SEO Industry Update
January 2012

2. Industry Updates
Search Plus Your World
• Google announced that they are transforming Google into a
search engine that understands not only content, but also
people and relationships.
• Whilst this started with social search and increased
integration of Google+ they have now taken this to a game
changing level with several new features that will redefine
how we interact in Google results.
• Personal Results, which enable you to find information just
for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own
and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be
able to see on your results page;
• Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which
enable you to immediately find people you‘re close to or
might be interested in following; and,
• People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and
Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest,
and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because
behind most every query is a community.

3. Industry Updates
Guava Verdict on Search Plus Your World
• “I don't think Google is using this as purely a platform for Google+ despite what it currently
looks like. From the recent comments by Eric Schmidt we can see that Google is keen to
reach out to Facebook and Twitter.
– Gary Moyle
• “This change is one of a series of still continuing updates to Google that have been rolling
out since the G+ project started, and whilst some marketers are pegging it to a desperate
move to force G+ down user's throats, my opinion is that this has been on the roadmap for
the last year or more.
– Mark Edmondson
• “It will be more important than ever to make sure users have a good experience with your
brand and that this is vocalised online. One damning photo of a bad hotel room could be
enough to put thousands of people off going there, likewise one perfect sea view will mean
the opposite. Rather than requiring two completely independent search strategies I think this
will nudge companies further towards a more holistic strategy where everything has to be
considered from both a social and traditional perspective.”
– Tom Wigley

4. Industry Updates
Google Forced to Act Over Paid Sponsorship Campaign
• Aaron Wall from seobook.com spotted how a search for ―This post is sponsored by
Google‖ brought back over 400 pages written apparently as part of a Google marketing
campaign:
• The campaign essentially violated Google‘s guidelines against paid links and shortly
afterwards Google was forced to release a statement via Matt Cutts.
• “Google was trying to buy video ads about Chrome, and these sponsored posts were an
inadvertent result of that… In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to
demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome
side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other
company would.” Matt Cutts
• https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts/NAWunDzJSHC
• This action has met a mixed response with some SEOs worried about the consequences of
a single link passing pagerank.

5. Industry Updates
Guava Verdict on Chrome Penalty
• “The Chrome team didn't actually/intentionally do anything wrong. All it now confirms is that
Google's behaviour is inconsistent and they will take action in response to a media story
(originally from Search Engine Land in this case) blowing it out of proportion, even if that
story is fundamentally wrong.
– Teddie Cowell
• This raises massive questions about what actually constitutes a "paid link" and whether you
can provide anything of value to a webmaster with the "risk" of an incidental link in return.
Google need to be seen as being pro-active in policing themselves against their Terms of
Service so I can understand the basic logic behind this decision, however it does seem rash
as in the real world it only reinforces and confuses this already convoluted problem.”
– Tom Wigley
• An utterly pointless symbolic act. Deranking themselves for [browser] will make not one jot
of difference to the amount of downloads chrome gets, and they have further muddied the
waters on what digital marketers should or should not be doing by demoting themselves for
an "accidental" paid link.
– Mark Edmondson

6. Industry Updates
buySAFE Sues Google Over “Trusted Stores”
• Google is being sued by a company called
buySAFE, which offers a safe-shopping service to
online retailers and their customers
• buySafe is basically accusing Google of;
– (1) Patent Infringement
– (2) Stealing proprietary business information
– (3) Pushing buySafe customers to switch to
Google Trusted Stores
• Interestingly, the lawsuit also claims that Google is
allegedly offering higher search result rankings for
those that participate in the Trusted Stores program
(Google Trusted Stores)
• It remains to be seen whether other high profile
‗safe shopping‘ services will see this as a potential
threat and literally follow suit

7. Industry Updates
Guava Verdict on Google “Trusted Stores” Lawsuit
• “In a world that seems to have gone slightly patent crazy over the last 6 months I'm left
wondering whether everything is patentable. It seems to me that guaranteeing a transaction
with an online store is not all that different from an ESCROW merchant who acts as a
middle-man, or a credit-card provider who will protect your transactions. That said, if a
patent exists it exists. The issue at hand also seems to be considerably deeper. Google
have certainly acted in a bullish fashion towards many verticals online and if the allegation of
them promising customers an advantage in natural search turns out to be true this could be
particularly concerning.”
– Tom Wigley
• “Obviously the most controversial angle of this is Google allegedly offering high rankings for
domains that participate in it’s trusted stores program. Whilst this would potentially represent
a valid trust signal in Google’s algorithm it does represent a conflict of interest as it is a
Google owned service. It remains to be seen whether this is indeed fact or part of the
internal chaos we have seen at Google in recent months.
– Gary Moyle

8. Industry Updates
Growth in SSL Queries
• Guava looked at this back in October 2011 for it‘s UK client base across a variety of sectors,
sizes of websites and locations, and the largest impact was just 0.4% of keywords.
• After studying a range of retail clients in January this has increased to a range of 0.7 – 1.0%
however it could significantly larger for other publishers.
• “On balance now I’m quite looking forward to (not provided) data, since I think in exchange
for the keywords we will get the demographic data of users who are logged in to Google via
the +1 metrics. And now Google have just updated their privacy policy so that everyone is
opted in to sharing their data across Google products, more of that data should seep into
GA.”
– Mark Edmondson
• “I think we’ll see a steady increase in these figures over the next 12 months largely driven by
the adoption of the Google+ social platform. This will give us some insight into the growth of
Google+ users in across many verticals which will be fascinating”.
– Gary Moyle

9. Industry Updates
Updated Google Privacy Policy
• Google have announced that effective from March 1st, all of Google services will have the
same privacy policy, meaning data can be freely shared between Google properties such as
Gmail, G+, YouTube and factored into the main Google search results.
• “There are serious anti-trust storm clouds on the horizon for Google and public opinion is in a
fragile state with recent bad PR - see the “don’t be evil” bookmarklet designed by
Facebook/Twitter/Myspace engineers in response to Search Plus My World”
– Mark Edmondson
• http://www.focusontheuser.org/
• It uses Googles own results to show how search plus my world would look if Google wasn’t
pushing G+ down everyone’s throats (see below).

10. PPC Industry Update
January 2012

11. Industry Updates
Ad group impression share metrics coming soon
• Previously impression share metrics have only been
available at the campaign level
• This was beneficial but lacked the visibility of being able to
see exactly where potential volume was being lost
• As part of the upcoming change, Google is improving its
algorithm and will be updating all campaign level impression
share statistics back to May 2011 – prior to this date
impression share metrics will no longer be available
• Google will now be offering ad group level impression share
metrics for the Search and Display Networks
• Once this is released, we will be able to use ad group
impression share data to, for example, better identify high
performing ad groups that aren't capturing the majority of
available impressions and therefore where more volume can
be achieved
| Copyright Guava Limited

12. Industry Updates
Ad group impression share metrics explained
• Impression Share = the % of impressions you
received divided by the estimated number of
impressions you were eligible to receive
• Lost Impression Share (rank): the % of
impressions lost due to ad rank
• Exact Match Impression Share: % of impressions
received for searches that exactly matched your
keyword divided by the estimated number of exact
match impressions you were eligible to receive
• You will be able to select these columns from the
‗ad groups‘ tab under ‗columns > customize
columns‘:
• Google will now update impression share statistics
on a daily basis at 8pm GMT
• This change will roll out from 30th January

13. Industry Updates
„Ask on Google+‟ links appearing in results
• Only certain users have seen this (as it is one
of many Google tests going on in the search
engine results pages) – there hasn‘t been an
official announcement from Google
• Prominence of Google+ in search results
continues - now users are being prompted to
ask their friends on the Google+ social network
at the bottom of the page
• This doesn‘t mean much for us at the moment,
but demonstrates Google leaning towards
informational searches with a view to potentially
using social links to find the answer

14. AdWords introduces new mobile targeting options
We now have the ability to be more granular We will also be able to target users based on
with mobile device targeting; within the whether they are using a faster wi-fi connection
AdWords interface we can now select which or not. This will be most useful when directing
mobile operating systems we want to focus our visitors to landing page content which includes
campaigns on, and ensure ads are reaching media-rich content such as video.
the right audience.
This demonstrates the growth of mobile PPC and the need to further refine targeting methods in
alignment with more sophisticated mobile marketing strategies
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