A new announcement has taken the world of SEO by storm – A new initiative by search engine leaders Google, Yahoo! and Bing to make life a little easier for webmasters who want to add rich snippets markup to their web pages. The difficulty lies in the fact that all search engines ask for data to be configured in a different way.

With the launch of schema.org, search engines offer a common set of schemas for the addition of rich snippet markup to web pages. There is absolutely no doubt about the benefits of Schema.org from the webmaster perspective, but what of the user. Can the user experience and appreciate the benefits of this new development?

The answer is – Yes they can. This can best be explained with an example.

This is an example of a rich snippet. It offers a collection of constructive information about the review of X-Men: First Class.

The benefits of Schema.org for users like you and me can be understood from this rich snippet.

A complete information package

What do you need from a movie review? You want to know if people actually liked it or not. The example gives you a clear picture in terms of the reception that the movie has received, till date. Just one look and you have all the information you need. You don’t even have to read the review. You can take an informed decision just by looking at the snippet.

Structured Information

The information on offer follows a structure. If you look at it closely, it offers you a star rating and it also offers you a percentage. The percentage tells you about the number of people who have liked the movie (figures are pertinent to the site). It also tells readers about the number of reviews available on that particular site. When you look at the snippet, you know what to expect and the amount of information about that particular topic available on the site.

Best Possible Information

The fluff is removed and you get information from the best possible sources. You know you can depend on the information that you are looking at. More importantly, the information is offered keeping in mind the different requirements of a user. So, somebody who is only looking for the ‘stars’ will get what he wants, while somebody else looking for a ‘percentage’ will get what she wants and so on and so forth.

Saves Time

We are an impatient bunch of people when it comes to searching for information on the World Wide Web. We want information that is complete and that too quickly. We want to make an informed decision on as limited information as possible. Search engines offer us just that. A look at the rich snippet and we are done. More importantly, they offer us the kind of information that tells us whether we should access the particular link or not; whether it’s going to be useful for us or not.

All this and a whole lot more is a result of Schema.org. This is just a tip of the iceberg. There are plenty of benefits that we might not even notice and take them as a natural course of events. We might not realize that our ‘search’ lives have benefitted through the collective efforts of the Search Engines and the webmasters.

With the addition of social search features on Google; and the use of 'social signals' for ranking regular search results, it’s time that you used the tremendous potential of social media sites to improve your organic search engine results. 

The level of contribution by social sites for determining search engine rankings is up for debate, but there is no doubt that social media does influence these rankings in some way or form. So this gives rise to the question – How does social media play a role in search engine rankings? A clearer picture can help you optimize its potential to enhance your search results.

It's important to understand that your social content goes a long way in complementing your search results.

"Shares and Likes"

With the massive market penetration of social media sites such as Facebook; it was, but time that the Google Algorithm factored in some core elements of these sites.  So, Google has now integrated 'shares' and 'likes' into its algorithm. Recent studies indicate that the ‘shares’ feature on Facebook, carries more weight than the 'Likes' feature. But then again, this can be debated till the cows come home. So how do you, as a business, make use of this development?

All you need to do is make sure that the link to your site, or your site content, gets a fair amount of 'shares' and 'likes'.

"Going all a – Twitter"

Tweets count. Yes, when it comes to search engine rankings, tweets matter. But not just any tweets. There is a catch. Search engines give due importance to the 'social authority' factor.  To put it simply, if the tweets are from a person who is well regarded, they count more, than tweets from a less authoritative person.  The key here is 'quality'. If the tweet is relevant and makes sense, it’s going to contribute effectively in terms of search results.

If you want your business to make use of this social media site, it’s important that you make sure only the right people 'tweet' about it. Such tweets are more likely to be 'retweeted'.

Showing Respect

The key to making the best use of social media with respect to organic search results, is not underestimating the intelligence of the search engines. Don’t make use of low brow tactics to improve rankings through Twitter and Facebook.  All the 'shares', 'likes' and 'tweets' need to be done by the public rather than the business.  Let’s just say that more 'shares' from different people are likely to get better results, as compared, to a large amount of ‘shares’ from the same people.

As the sphere of organic search results gets even more competitive, you need to find newer and better ways of improving your rankings. The impact of using social media on rankings cannot be denied, but you need to keep working on your social network marketing strategies for optimum benefits. For now, understanding and using the influence of social media on Google Search results can be termed a ‘work in progress’.

Recent studies conducted by leading search engine companies indicate that a large number of mobile searches have local intent. At first glance, this might sound a bit confusing. But, it isn’t too difficult to understand.

Let’s look at this from a user’s or a prospective consumer’s perspective, which is Me. I am searching for a restaurant specializing in barbeque, which is not too far from where I stay. I search for such a restaurant using my web enabled mobile; this I do by putting in a query that asks Google or any search engine to list the links of restaurants offering barbeque near my locality.

I will get the links, with the address and the phone number.

Advantage for businesses

Now that you have a gathered a fair bit of understanding about mobile searches with local intent, let’s talk about why it’s important for your business. Estimates are that almost one third or all mobile searches have local intent. This means more and more people are searching for businesses, restaurants, hotels, and all sorts of vendors that have a local address. You, as a business need to figure on such local searches. Otherwise, you are going to lose out on your prospective customers. 

Closer to Your Customers

For any business, it’s important that it is closer to its customers. Think about it for a second.  Which is the kind of customer that you have a better chance of attracting – a customer who is conducting a local search or a universal search? Both have their own advantages, but ‘local intent’ is much better placed to attract customers.

It’s a good idea for all businesses irrespective of their size, but it is even a better idea for small businesses. For e.g. If I am searching for a plumber, more than his website, I want his address and/or his contact details. So, for somebody with a plumbing business, it makes more sense to be a part of local mobile search.

The years ahead are definitely going to see an increase in the percentage of local mobile searches. As the use of web enabled mobile phones increases, so will the use of location based mobile searches. It’s a win-win situation for businesses, who wish to improve their local visibility and in turn want to improve the performance of their business.

What is QDF?

‘Query Deserves Freshness’ is a key component of the Google Algorithm. It gives importance to the ‘freshness quotient’. If a topic is ‘hot’, meaning it’s in the news, content related to that particular topic immediately ranks at the top of Google’s search engine rankings. That, in a nutshell is QDF.

With QDF, the amount of link backs to the content does not matter. The key focus is on the freshness of that content and whether that particular content relates to a topic that is currently a hot topic of discussion.

There has always been confusion about whether content that has attracted a large number of links over a period of time can be considered ‘quality’ content or the content that is fresh but doesn’t have a huge number of links - The QDF algorithm aims to find balance between the two sides of the debate.

When does QDF actually come into play?

This happens when Google notices that there is a spike in activity regarding a certain topic; say the blogosphere is excited about a particular development or there are various news stories regarding the same, and there are search engine queries about that particular topic – and all this happening at the same time or within the same time frame.

The QDF algorithm can best be explained with a real time example. The one name that is doing the rounds of all discussions, currently, across the real and the online world is ‘Osama Bin Laden’.  Key in Osama, Bin Laden or Osama Bin Laden on Google and have a look at the results. The latest news from various news providers will figure first, followed by links to related content based on the order of freshness.

Here is an Example:

How do you leverage the immense potential of QDF for SEO purposes?

It goes without saying that your content should be fresh. You must also make sure that that this fresh content is about a topic that is uppermost in the minds of the people at that particular point of time. It’s of paramount importance that your blogs be updated frequently and you keep a lookout for the kind of topics that are uppermost in the people’s minds at that point of time.

Making the use of Press Releases, news and even PPC with keywords related to the ‘popular query’ is going to prop your SERPs. It’s important to understand that you will need to combine various strategies to optimize the use of QDF. The aggregate of all your strategies will come into the reckoning when Google’s QDF algorithm comes into play.

Google constantly keeps improving and modifying, like no other major search engine is able to. In 2010 alone there have been as many around 10 algorithm or related changes rolled out by Google. With the frequent tweaks that Google keeps making to its algorithm, it continues to return the best results and lead the bunch of major search engines in terms of popularity and market share. Here is the inventory of the changes we saw in Google in 2010 and around.

• Answer Highlighting in search results (January 2010): Allows the users to get to the required information more quickly by seeking and bolding the likely answer to their question right in the search results.
   
• Refined Searches by Location (February 2010): “Nearby” tool in the Search Options panel helps users to better refine their searches.
   
• Public Data Search Feature (March 2010): A feature that makes it easy to find and compare public data from sources.
   
• Google Announces About Inclusion of Microdata in Descriptions (March 2010): Google announces about adding Microdata support for rich snippets, a part of HTML5 specification.
   
• Google Announces Page Speed/Site Speed To Be An Official Factor For Ranking (April 2010): Google search engine ranking for the slower sites might go down.
   
• Google Updates Real-Time Search Results (April 2010): Google integrates Real-Time Search into search result pages to provide updates from a comprehensive set of sources just as the stuff happens on the web.
   
• Long Tail Algorithm Change (May 2010): Google confirms in regard to an algorithmic change made looking for the higher quality sites, Google MayDay Update, that it impacts long tail traffic.
   
• Google Caffeine, A New Search Index, Made Official (June 2010): Google brings its new indexing engine, Caffeine, into action, which was rolled out on trial in August 2009. According to Google, it provides 50% fresher results for web searches than its last index and is the largest collection of web content they have offered.
   
• Real-Time Search Feature Launched (December 2010): By clicking on "Latest Results" or selecting "Latest" from the search options menu, a full page of live tweets, blogs, news, and other web content can be scrolled right on Google.

So, these are Google’s distinct updates for this year. This is what Google is appreciated about – a desire to evolve and leverage innovation to make information access easy and timely.