Search Engine Optimization News Blog

Will Google China be no more?

In January, following the hacking of several Gmail accounts, Google said:

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

According to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal, China isn’t budging:

At a press conference Friday, Li Yizhong, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, was asked by a reporter how China would react if Google does stop censoring Google.cn. “I hope Google can respect Chinese rules and regulations,” responded Mr. Li, whose ministry is one of several that regulates China’s Internet. “If you insist on taking this action that violates Chinese laws, I repeat: you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and you yourself will have to bear the consequences.”

Reports noted here earlier last week indicated that scientists felt a China without Google would cripple research, but the general public was more than happy to use Baidu instead. It looks as though China is calling Google’s bluff, and Google in turn is calling China’s – a report from the Financial Times seems to indicate Google will make good on their threat to pull out altogether:

Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now “99.9 per cent” certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking.

In a hardening of positions on both sides, the Chinese government also on Friday threw down a direct public challenge to the US search company, with a warning that it was not prepared to compromise on internet censorship to stop Google leaving.

The signs that Google was on the brink of closing Google.cn, its local search service in China, came two months after it promised to stop bowing to censorship there. But while a decision could be made very soon, the company is likely to take some time to follow through with the plan as it seeks an orderly closure and takes steps to protect local employees from retaliation by the authorities, the person familiar with its position said.

Wow. If Google really does shut down Google.cn, it could have a huge effect on the balance of power in China – those not satisfied with Baidu would likely turn to Google competitor Yahoo or even Bing.

Rich snippets appearing in Google are now supported in three versions or languages; formerly, Google offered microformats and RDFa support, and has now added support for microdata, which is a part of the HTML5 specification.

In May of last year, Google first announced rich snippets on their Custom Search blog, with a lot of restrictions:

At this time, Rich Snippets attribute information for Custom Search is only returned in XML (via <PageMap> tags), so you can use your own customized presentation controls. We’re looking to make this easier for you in the future. Indexing of the rich snippets information can have unspecified latency, as some pages are indexed and refreshed more frequently than others, and PageMap attributes may not be indexed from all webpages… If you are getting results back via XML, then the custom attributes are returned in the results within the PageMap tag, as shown below. You can parse the DataObjects within the PageMap tag and provide customized presentation of the relevant attributes.

This meant that XHTML verification was highly important.

Now more options are open. From the Google Webmaster Central Blog:

Today, we’re happy to announce support for microdata for use in rich snippets… By using microdata markup in your web pages, you can specify reviews, people profiles, or events information on your web pages that Google may use to improve the presentation of your pages in Google search results.

Here’s an example:

The blog goes on to exoll the simplictity of the system, and to warn that rich snippets are not guaranteed, but requests for inclusion can be submitted:

Microdata has the nice property of balancing richness with simplicity. As you can see, it’s easy to add markup to your pages using a few HTML attributes like itemscope (to define a new item), itemtype (to specify the type of item being described), and itemprop (to specify a property of that item). Once you’ve added markup to a page, you can test it using the rich snippets testing tool to make sure that Google can parse the data on your page.

It is still a good idea to get an XHTML validation service to check your site and ensure that you get all the perks you can!

Google has done it again – streamlined yet another sector of tehir offerings to make them more accessible. According to the Google Blog:

Today, we’re making it easier for these users and software providers to do business in the cloud with a new online store for integrated business applications. The Google Apps Marketplace allows Google Apps customers to easily discover, deploy and manage cloud applications that integrate with Google Apps.

The Apps include:

• Zoho CRM (a business management solution for organization-wide Sales, Marketing, Customer Support & Service and Inventory Management.

• Concur Breeze, designed to help small businesses easily handle expense reporting, reducingb wasted man-hours and increasing productivity

• TripIt, a  travel plans organizer that works with all travel bookers and takes organization to the next level

• FreshBooks, the online billing and bookkeeping app that lets you send, track and collect payments quickly.

• Intuit Online Payroll, the easy payroll solution integrated smoothly with Google Apps:

According to TechMeme,

Every day, thousands of businesses choose the cloud.  More than 2 million businesses have adopted Google Apps over the last three years, eliminating the hassles associated with purchasing, installing and maintaining hardware and software themselves.

With the Google Apps Marketplace to help streamline y0our business, and a solid SEO firm to handle your website content and linking needs, you can build your online business into a power to be reckoned with.

Does social media really make a difference? Yes – in fact, social bookmarking services can be expected to see an upturn in demand for their talents this year and next.

Social marketing experts often tout social bookmarking or media sites as such as Twitter and Facebook as the ultimate in ecommerce business promotion. A reader survey at practical ecommerce let readers chime in as to whether this helps or hurts their businesses.

The Feb 2010 survey looked at social media’s present and future role in regard to ecommerce. Four questions were asked, and comments solicited. The survey asked what social media sites were used the most, presenting Twitter, Facebook and “Other” as choices.

LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace, Google Buzz, Squidoo, Delicious, Flickr, Ning and blogging were also mentioned, making up the 29.3% marked ‘other. Facebook gathered in 78% of the crowd, while Twitter was also used by 75.6%. Only 11% of people said they use no social networking tools whatsoever.

That may change however, as the survey went on to show. The question having to do with future plans revealed that only 1.2% said they have no plans to use social media in the future, and 2.4% of respondents plan to decrease their use of social media. 26.8 percent said they will maintain their current level of social media use and 69.5 percent of respondents said they plan to increase social media marketing.

When asked if social media has helped or hurt them, respondents were not as decisive in their answers. A whopping 25.6% of respondents said they don’t believe that social media has helped their business at all, while an additional 18.3% admitted to not knowing if it helped or not. Another 18.3% committed to the standpoint that social media definitely had a positive impact on their business, while the largest faction, 35.4%, said they had seen improvement.

The respondents were from a survey pool that leaned heavily towards ecommerce, with 70.7% representing ecommerce companies. The remainder were split between developers, designers or programmers (8.5 percent), Software, SaaS or other vendor / ecommerce merchants (6.1 percent), or “Other” (14.6 percent).

With the most telling figures being the ones stating more companies will use social marketing in 2010-2011, it might be wise to hire out some of your needs to professionals, to ensure quality social bookmarking.

A new force is now powering nearly have of Bing queries, according to Microsoft. The new MSN portal has been awaited with baited breath, and the beta release has people rushing to try out Bing’s new interface.

MSN Is Changing for the Better

• Everything You Love & More…

According to Bob Visse, GM for MSN at Microsoft,  over the course of the beta period, the company tweaked the Bing search box and its presentation at the top of the page to make it more prominent. The blue fading to white seemed to get good results:

Also prominent is the preview beta of Bing Local Search, the answer to Google Local. The results will take time to emerge, but MSN has around 600 million users globaly.

Bing Search

Search:

Local Edition

Visse says that Microsoft plans to launch a major online ad campaign for MSN (which is also indirectly a campaign for Bing) in the next few months. The Bing commercials so far have fallen slightly flat, so here’s hoping that the new round of marketing is marginally more entertaining.

Reportedly, MSN drives a hefty 50% of Bing’s traffic – but most of this can be attributed to diehard MSN fans. Can Microsoft really compete on a serious level with Google when they actually only have a serious core of diehards to keep the engines running? Or will their global presence save the day – MSN is much less hated abroad than the arrogant Google.

Bing periodically spikes since its roll out last year, trying to catch Yahoo. of course, with Yahoo ‘getting out of search’ – at least, for the short term, can MSN finally catch up? If so, you may want to guarantee your SERPs ranking in more than one engine.