Social Search is a novelty. On paper, it sounds good: search results are influenced by the likes and interests of those in your social circle. But for the vast majority of searches, I don’t really give a damn what my friends think or where they have been before. Yet Google has stated that they’ve launched a more integrated social search experience. Here’s the example they’ve posted:
“This means you’ll start seeing more from people like co-workers and friends, with annotations below the results they’ve shared or created. So if you’re thinking about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and your colleague Matt has written a blog post about his own experience, then we’ll bump up that post with a note and a picture”
Useful? No. Abstract Example? Yes. Nice try guys.
I search Google when I need information about a topic that none of my friends have. A perfect example of a situation like this would be if I wanted to buy a nice new HD Video Camera. There’s maybe 3 or 4 people out of my 500 or so Facebook friends who are even close to being qualified to answer the question “what is the best HD video camera I can buy for $X?” The people I want to hear from are professional videographers and product reviewers. Possibly I’d go to Amazon and read reviews simply because every product has a review there. But I won’t defer to my friends for this one.
A question I’d post to Facebook rather than Google is something like “What’s the best Mexican food place in Pacific Beach?” That’s something I want to hear from my friends. Google’s results are not in any way supported by actual quality of service, the local results are easily gamed, and they are simply not that useful compared to a few vouched for suggestions by my friends in the area.
Social Search, to me, is simply a buzzword mashup without any useful substance. It’s almost like they’re showing off what they can do with their technology. It’s no secret that Google absolutely sucks at anything that has to deal with Social-Anything, and the Social Search enhancements are a shining example of their perpetual failure in that field.
The bottom line is, Google is for search queries outside of the realm of your friend’s expertise. Google themselves state that 20 to 25% of searches have never been searched before. That’s a huge amount of searches that you nor anyone else has ever queried before. I’m calling it right now, Social Search will not become what all the buzzword fans think it will become.
Big day today, hit 100 questions asked at SEOLoudmouths.com! Granted, most of those were posted by myself and my sister, it’s still a nice milestone to hit. I have some big plans in the works for growing this site and community to even larger levels and traffic and will try and document as much as I can along the way. Things are growing quickly for being only a week old and I’m stoked to see where things go in the near future. I have some personal goals for the site right now that I think can be hit within a month or so. I will post up an article this weekend about my goals and thought processes.
Big shout out to Gary Simon, the web design course expert, for doing up a sweet banner for the top of the site, it’s looking great!
Hey guys, I set this up last night relatively on a whim but I am excited about it. I am a huge fan of online communities and forums (as can be seen from my participation at Wickedfire over the years) but I’ve always thought there was a hole in the SEO space where a Q&A site would be very useful.
There are a few stack exchange based sites out there that kinda fill the gap, but for the most part they’re a little too White Hat to be useful and tend to devolve into discussions of topics that are both 1) uninteresting and 2) not that helpful.
So I launched SEO Loudmouths to try and fill that gap. It’s very green around the ears right now, but I’m working on annoying all of my friends enough to get them to start posting questions and answers to get the ball rolling. So this weekend, do me a favor and tweet/facebook/digg/blog the shit out of this site and let’s get it rolling with some good questions and I’ll do my best to answer things with everyone else and get it really picking up steam.
Crazy. Been building up sites and projects like a mad man this year already. Got some good stuff in the works to post here and announce.
Saw this just now, loved it. Figured it was a good thing to keep for posterity’s sake:
I spend a significant portion of my time soul searching and thinking a little bit too much any one thing in particular. Recently, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time thinking about the path I’m taking with a lot of my own professional goals and really trying to force myself to look at the longer term picture rather than making the “quick buck”.
I got into development and SEO because I have high aspirations of becoming a very successful startup entrepreneur. I like to come up with things, to create and innovate. The 9-5 grind is very hard for me to come to terms with conceptually.
When looking at the general state of SEO and what is truly happening when you’re manipulating the SERPs, you quickly reach a moral crossroads where you wonder how far you should push things in order to promote your site as high as it can go to get that traffic. Considering the rules are set by Google, who also determines who your competitors are in the SERPs, it’s easy to get carried away and lose site of what you’re actually doing and who you’re actually affecting.
The high road is of course to build only quality sites and write quality content and let “nature” take its course. Obviously, on-site factors should be manipulated as heavily as possible, as that is something reasonably within your control and can have a lasting, long term effect on where your traffic comes from. But when it comes to link building and off page factors, how far should we really be pushing things?
I’m drawn to SEO because of the technical implications of it. You’re up against the largest and most technically innovative ranking algorithm in the world, and you use automation to combat it and beat your competitors. Sounds like the plot of a futuristic digital war movie.
But part of the process really grinds me down and I wonder how much I truly believe in what I’m doing as we opposed to going with the flow. Manipulative content generation, aggressive link spamming on sites that people actually work on, and deceptive cloaking techniques, coupled with shady offers and links that make us money but could potentially hurt consumers all go against what I personally believe in in terms of what we as professionals should be investing our time in.
I’ve taken a step back from my projects and sites for a bit and started reevaluating where I really want to be putting my efforts and passion into. It’s made me realize that any effort put into anything that will not become a long term, valuable money making asset is short sided and not worth your time.
Business success is all about assets. Whether that means running a successful web startup (where the actual app and paying user base is the asset) or owning property or anything in between, assets are what separate an hourly wage worker and a tycoon.
If you aren’t trying to get to the point of being an asset holder, you will be forever shackled.
So I’ve made it a goal of mine to switch back into my passion of building out web applications. I have had a few ideas shelved that I really want to build and have wanted to for years that I hope could be useful and become an asset for myself and whoever works on it with me. From a technical level, I’m light years ahead of where I was when I originally crafted these ideas, so the only thing really stopping me from building them and them succeeding is hard work and focus. And that is what I shall do.
As far as the rest of my life, I have been reading a ton of productivity and business and management books lately and am planning on writing reviews of each as I get through them here. Additionally, I have been noting my own ideas and thoughts about business philosophy and where your efforts should be, and I want to share those as well. Plus, I have some really opinionated and somewhat unorthodox views about some aspects of business that I REALLY want to start publishing because I feel passionately about them and want to see what kinds of discussion they can spark.
Does this mean the end of SEO for me? Absolutely not. The knowledge I have of SEO runs very deep, and the professional relationships I have formed with other SEO experts has paid off 100 fold. I am just switching gears from chasing the dollar to building an empire. I will apply my skills and knowledge every step of the way, because SEO is as important as ever, but I will not let it dictate my approach to projects anymore. It’s all about building assets for me now. And the way I will build assets is through technical innovation and development.
I do have plans for a few learning courses as well, including one specifically about link building of all things. I enjoy writing and would love to have a learning course and forum as an asset, and I have a great domain and set of topics for it, it’s just a matter of grinding out the content. Once done, I will absolutely promote it here for everyone to see and join if they’re interested.
Game time.
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