3 Things Google Did While You Were Distracted by Google Plus

Steve Rubel wrote a great post in AdAge - and his personal blog - about three quite significant things Google did recently amid the media storm over Google Plus. While we're all trying to figure out all we can about Google Plus, Google's new "social network" designed to compete with Facebook, Google is making not-insignificant tweaks and announcements in other areas that you should pay heed to, particularly if you work in online content marketing in any capacity. I've "Amplified" them below.

Amplify’d from www.steverubel.me

First, on June 7 Google unveiled a new way for authors to claim ownership of their content around the web. This allows a writer to embed verified HTML code tied to his/her Google+ profile in all their content, no matter where it appears (e.g. my blog or AdAge.com). Once inserted Google then automatically includes the author’s profile image whenever these works show up in searches. Already the New York Times, CNET and The New Yorker have adopted this simple tag.

Next on June 28 Google began to make more data available to companies on the impact that tweets, Facebook likes and, most importantly, its own “+1s” sharing buttons have on site traffic.

Finally, Google News is starting to get more social as well. On July 14 the ten-year-old site launched a program that rewards regular users with social badges of authority for reading lots of news stories in a given subject matter.

Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst, suggested that site owners look more deeply at other metrics such as conversion rates, bounce rates (how quickly users abandon a site) and search click-throughs.

Google urged publishers to think beyond the almighty PageRank number that SEO types historically pay much heed to.

Google is slowly reinventing the core of its business by refining the quality of what people turn to it most for - search results - by favoring explicit and implicit signals of authority. Read more at www.steverubel.me

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a19lwv