Universal Search, Yelp Review and SEO - #seopodcast 115

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. Adjust the camera here. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. Charles Lewis, your Internet Marketing Specialist. Here at eWebStyle. At eWebStyle. I think this is here. It's important, right here. Not over there, right here. We are so glad you guys tuned in. We missed a week. We missed you. We missed each other. I feel like getting prepped today. I'm like, what do we do now? How do we do this? It's kind of lost. I do remember one of the things that we do is we have a tip from the previous podcast. This is podcast number 115. So if you go back and listen to 114, one tip that you should pull out of that is sign up for G Plus and Plus One eWebStyle. Yeah, Plus One Us. In fact, a lot of pages. Plus One Us in a few places. Yeah. A few key places like our podcast. We're going to talk a little bit about changes Google's making on Google Local Places. And I'm sure this is all tied together as they get more collateral and momentum with G Plus. I think, you know, things are going to change. It's going to change a lot. You know, one of the things I was thinking about with G Plus was how it can affect search rankings from a keyword level. So, for example, if you search SEO Podcast or SEO Houston, chances are our homepage will show. Yeah. So if you Plus One Us under SEO Houston, will that give us more credibility for that keyword? Right. Versus keyword specific because it's in the result. Oh, yeah. And so, yeah, so search a few terms. As a matter of fact, I'll probably post those terms. And the search results. So you just click the search result and Plus One Us and boom, we're off and running. So, yeah, G Plus has got some... Just a thought. You know, I'm going to probably do some

research. Maybe we'll do some testing on that. It's got some really exciting implications, I think. Like, do remember, we are your friendly local top position snatchers. Yeah. Go get your spot. And I've got a little bit of news here. Did you see the video I sent you? The Gmail man. Oh, the Gmail man. I didn't watch it, but I saw it. Oh, man. It was like a spoof because Google was doing the whole campaign to get people to stop using AOL and all this old email campaign. And Microsoft's now spoofing the Gmail man. And so here is the Gmail man dressed up like a mailman with Gmail written all over him. And he's walking down the street going, you know, I don't know. I'll make it up. Hemorrhoids. Hmm. Inflammation. Hmm. Cat. Hmm. Dander. And this little girl stops him. Mailman, are you reading the mail? No. I'm reading everyone's mail. You can't do that. Well, guess what? When certain Gmail people get together with certain email emails, an ad is born. And the girl goes, ew. It's hilarious. Yeah, we'll watch it. But we talked about that. Yeah. We talked about, you know, ads showing in Gmail based on the emails you're receiving. So it's an interesting spin. It doesn't change my opinion on it. Yeah. It is an interesting spin, though. Like, so the data's out there in, obviously, you can search your own emails. Mm-hmm. Somebody at Google, at Gmail can search, you know, terms. And if you're typing terrorist or you're typing whatever, they can go out there and do that. So it's just an interesting big brother interpretation. Showing ads, I kind of like. I think that's useful, right? Yeah, it's okay. Because I'm always looking for the latest and greatest of whatever it may be. It's a little bit like this way, so. Yeah, yeah. Am I not in the picture there? Yeah. I can adjust that again. All right. So what do we got next? Microsoft is apparently collecting Wi-Fi data. I don't know if you remember, Google,

specifically in Europe, I think, got, like, major flack and actually some cases against them in the courts in Europe because they were collecting Wi-Fi data, like Wi-Fi information. Apparently, Microsoft is now doing it and publishing it, and it doesn't, like, there's a big hoopla about, like, didn't they learn anything? Well, I'm pretty sure they found that loophole. Well, yeah, they do have less information than what Google had available. Did you hear time travel is a no-go? I just figured it would be. I didn't hear that. But, you know. There was apparently some experiment. I don't even remember where. I just read this. And then, so the article was time travel proven not possible, and then the rest of it is saying how it's an invalid test. So, like, the test isn't specific. Apparently, the test is in a flat time-space arrangement, and really time-space is a curve. So, if you don't prove it on the curve, then you haven't proved anything. You can't really do it. Yeah. I don't know. Whatever. I'm probably going to mention this a couple times today. The horrible experience that we have had with WP e-commerce. Boom. Oh, man. This has been bad. By the way. Stupid boo. Just unbelievably unfocused, unprofessional, bizarre performance from them. We installed WP e-commerce and then paid for their cart upgrade so that we could use Authorize.net for one of our clients. Which, by the way, we're struggling to keep. We may not keep that client. Because it is. Because of this whole issue. So, basically, I even just now tried to sign into the former forum and print out the emails. I can't even sign in now. Boom. It's just unbelievable. So, it wasn't working. I was using a slightly older version of WP e-commerce and a slightly older version of the gold cart, which is the premium upgrade, $40 upgrade, so that you can actually interact with Authorize.net and other merchants. But we're talking about WP e-commerce, which is a shopping cart plug-in for WordPress. Yeah. Just throw that at you. I'm

so deep in it. So, it was working to the point it was charging charges and after it ran the charge and that showed up in our merchant account, it was returning to a non-existent page. So, I go and I'm like, hey, you know, I need your help. By the way, when you request help, you need to give them a username and password for your WordPress site and FTP username and password. They literally should be able to fix anything. The response I got was, oh, first I recommend you upgrade to WP e-commerce because I was on one version back and gold cart. I had done that before. I had a little bit of problem. So, I was like, okay, the guy is recommending it. I'll do it. I'll spend a little time. I got it working. He writes back and then I send him a message saying, okay, now it's every time I run a charge of saying that not authorized. Not working. He writes back and literally says, I think I printed this out. Hey, the new authorized CIM module is not 100%. I can upload the fixed files for you, but the authorized 2.0 module should still be working. That would be the backgrade, the downgrade that I was already operating on. Is that option still available on the store payment page? I'm having trouble logging into your WordPress dashboard. I'm getting a server timeout error. So, he couldn't give it into my WordPress dashboard. By the way, this is the last response I've received at least a week ago. And I'm still trying to dialogue with him because there are some nice features in their cart. So, I get on. Sure enough, I can't sign in. I FTP. I remove the WordPress e-commerce plug-in and now I can log in. So, the thing he told me to upgrade was the thing that was causing him from being able to log into the system. How do you release, like I know little bugs, right? Authorized.net is one of the largest merchants. As far

as I know, I haven't done any research. I mean, we have clients come to us and this client specifically was looking at another merchant that didn't work out. He ended up with Authorized.net. That's how it works. That's how popular they are. And you just released a component that doesn't work for Authorized.net. Boo. Boo. I don't know. What's the opposite of a punch in the face? Are we supposed to hug him or something? Something like that. Yeah. We just kick him. Kick him right where it counts. Yeah. That has been unbelievably frustrating and like I said, Kick him in his commerce. Yeah. Kick him in his commerce. Use my converse to kick him in his commerce. And even now, I couldn't log in and see the status of my ticket. I mean, one thing I didn't mention. In the middle of all this, they upgraded their system, their ticket system. Apparently, it's unbelievably dysfunctional. So, it's taken them a week to get it working and it's not working yet. So, don't, you know, just, you know, if you're going to upgrade systems like that, you really need to do a little more testing. Well, yeah. That's why you have beta. Yeah. Right? That should have been, Put some clients on beta, your majority of clients like me who actually have a voice that can be heard and who actually want to use your product for lots of different e-commerce websites. Yeah, we have several clients. You know, I mean, e-com sites have been our past four clients. Yeah. You know, have all been e-com. I need e-com. And so, we've been directing WordPress and we're going to, you know, this is no flack against WordPress. WordPress has been stellar in this particular plug-in. And so, with that, I think we should give a punch in the face to Kart 66 because they rock. I turned it on. It worked first time. Formatting was perfect. Everything was perfect. I mean, just smooth as silk. Yeah. Punch in the face to Kart 66.

We'll put a link to Kart 66 if you guys ever need it. It could use a little more functionality here and there. And, at this point, I'm phenomenally happy with it. All right. Enough negative. We got a review. You might make up a review dance. We're going to get a review and step out of it. And cut it. I got a two-step. You got a two-step? I can do a two-step to any song. Oh. Fast, slow, slow. Not to be confused with the country two-step, which requires a partner. Oh, yeah. And is also a very unnatural dance because it's an asymmetric dance. I don't think it's really tough. All right. Here it is. Definitely worth listening to. This is Brasto. Brasto. July 23, 2011. He says, All right, everyone. If you are listening to this podcast, which eWebStyle is providing for free. Free. I think that's what the emphasis he intended when he wrote it. Free. The least you can do is give them a review. They are fun to listen to and clearly enjoy the topic. Though perhaps they would have fun talking about anything. Maybe they should have their own radio show. You know, if there's anyone out there who's interested in hiring us to do a radio show. Yeah. Yeah. Just give us, you know, an hour on your station. Yeah. And, yeah, webmasterradio.fm. I know you're probably listening. Yeah. We'll fill in that slot for you. We'll take care of that. Their knowledge of us and pretty much any subject. You know, we could brush up on Norwegian politics. Yeah. Absolutely. Their knowledge of SEO has increased as the show has progressed, as would our knowledge of Norwegian politics. And as listeners, keep sending them difficult questions to answer. We appreciate those questions. By the way, you can send questions to podcast at e-webstyle.com. Yeah. I'm going to knock them down by one star, but only because the show runs a bit long. Perhaps they can shave five minutes off the front end. They come across as representing an extremely honest

and upfront SEO shop. I'm glad that comes across. Yeah. If I ever decide to use anyone for my SEO needs, it will probably be them. Have to stop now. Might be exceeding my Gino time limit. Check earlier episodes to find out what that is if you didn't know. And I thought this was really interesting. Four stars, right? I respect that. Yeah. What's amazing is, and it made me think immediately, when my wife was about to give birth to our twins, and the nurse, this was in between contractions. The nurse was like, what pain level are you at? You know, zero, I think it was zero to ten, right? And she was like, eight and a half. And this was between contractions. And I'm like, so what is a contraction? Oh, a ten. Forty. Do you realize that ten on the scale usually means you pass out and need morphine, right? So people just have different, you know, they're bent on a scale is totally different. Yeah, everybody has their own opinion of what one star to five star is. What's the value of that star that he docked us. Yeah. Yeah. Well, appreciate the review. Yeah, absolutely. Rosto, really appreciate it. Hey, hit us up and, you know, give us your website and let us know so we can give you some link love. We'd love to do that. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's, I'm just excited we got a review. By the way, to make a review, go to iTunes, create an account, and then find our podcast, which is pretty easy to do, and submit a review. Make sure that we know. Yeah, simple steps. Make sure that we know so we can give you some link love. Mm-hmm. While you're at it, you might as well follow us on Twitter. Yep. Twitter.com slash eWips, though. Follow us on or like us on Facebook, facebook.com slash eWebStyle. We have a YouTube page, youtube.com slash eWebStyle. Surprise, surprise. And I think that's it. You can always, again, one last time, podcast at e-webStyle.com is

an email address where we will. And do not forget, we do a CIVO analysis podcast fairly regularly. It's where users submit on our website, their website. And if the lucky ones who are chosen, we actually do a video analysis, CIVO, search engine visitor optimization analysis of that website. Yeah, you go to eWebStyle.com, fill out the form on the right side, submit for the webinar. That's what we'll call it. We'll submit for the webinar. And either I or Chris will actually review it and record this video. And we'll tell you what's wrong with it, what's right with it, what you should change. Here's our recommendations. And it's really an honest, non-biased analysis of your website. And not brute, like, you know, I think there are some people out there who do analysis. No, if it's good, it'll be good. I'm not going to smash your site for the sake of trying to gain your business. Matter of fact, we don't even pitch on the webinar. There's no sales pitch. You just fill out the form. We'll submit it to you. And then if you want more information, you know, you can reach us. And that will be converted to a video podcast sometime in the near future. And we should put a link. We need to put a link on our podcast page. Yeah, yeah. Which list is that? The list of things that need to get done, should get done, but won't get done right now. Right now. And also we can put on Facebook, we can actually put a link to our Ustream, that actually page. And it's live. Yeah. Yeah. We do it live every, well, whenever we get a chance. All right. So let's get into the meat. We're going to talk about Google Places. We're going to talk about Google Universal Search. Yeah. Universal Search first. And by the way, what is Universal Search? So that's when you search the universe. And since Google has indexed the universe, they consider it, if you show up in shopping results, or in places

for, or in images for, or news for. So those little special areas that Google has. And I think actually like Google Local Places is probably included in that too. In the Universal Search. And so this is really talking about what works better in Universal Search. And it's a pretty comprehensive study. It found the article on Search Engine Land. And the article is by Barry Schwartz. And again, the title so that you guys can find it. And we'll put a link on our podcast, I mean, on our Facebook page. What wins in Google Universal Search? Videos, images, and Google. And so what would your thought be first? Video. My first thought would be video. I mean, because Google's whole thing is providing the best content for their users. And right now, video is the best content. I mean, it's an easier way to research something. You know, it's entertainment if you're watching it usually. And right now, with the biggest video platform being owned by Google, which is YouTube, I would think that video would be the most thing to search when people search on for anything on Google. Yep. And that's true. Basically, they broke this down into top 10 video, top 10 maps, top 10 news, top 10 shopping, and top 10 images. Google or Google products took four of those five slots. They missed on the news. There was a Wall Street Journal was there first on the news. And then Google was a little bit farther down. You know, it's one of the things that we've talked in our podcast. When you're putting your Google Local Places page together, we tend to want to use Picasa to store the images and then link into your Google Local Places. We also tend to want to use YouTube to put up your videos and embed those. Yeah, Google products. There was one other Google product that either we were using or we're going to use and link to. I can't remember exactly what it is. We do actually link from our website to our

Google Local Places listing. So, we think there's a lot of value. Of course, it makes sense. If I'm Google, hey, you're using my products, I'm going to give you. In fact, we have an example here coming up soon of how if you're going to use Google products and Google products, Google interfaces, then we're going to give you a little bit more credit, a little more value to whatever it is that you're doing. Yeah, I think the marketing takeaway from this would be when you're optimizing your pages, if you have video, I would use YouTube. I recommend that unless it's some sort of exclusive video that they only need featured on your site. And even then, you can make it private, but you may just want to use some sort of custom player or something like that. But if not, use YouTube. I think if you're embedding some sort of contact us or directions page, embed to Google Maps. I mean, with the things that they're listing that are showing up high in the rank, make sure you use those appropriately on your website. Yep. Helps increase your rank. Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't even know that there's much to say. They did make a comment about, let me see if I can find that, about why the Wall Street Journal was up before them. Da, da, da. So you find, now it says the, let's see, it says the URLs for news are URLs to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and other news sites. Very rarely does Google have a link to a news article on their own domain. So there's, you know, there's no Google reporter out reporting on Google. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, he'll be a robot, right? Yeah. He's just going to, they'll be information. He's going to get it out of our mail using the Gmail man. News is, Charles has just bought an iPad. Yeah. That'd be like the hundredth iPad. Oh, this was interesting. Google, I was reading, no, it was Apple. Oh, that's part of your blank

stare. We'll bring that up. We'll bring that up. Yeah. All right. All right. What's next? Let's talk about Google places for a minute. This is almost blank stare. I mean, this is, it's kind of, the blank stare here is at, is at Yelp. Yeah. If I was going to pull a blank stare from this article. Oh, yeah. It would be at Yelp. I mean, because basically what happened is last week, about a week and a half ago, Google stopped showing third party review sites like CitySearch, Yelp, and just this and so on on their Google local places pages and pulled them out and they're only showing Google reviews. To compensate that, what they did, because that's removed a lot of content, there's a big red button that says, add your own review. Yep. Now, Yelp, who was crying about this, I'm going to tell you what's ironic about the whole thing. There's like two ironies here, right? I think, yeah. The first thing that was ironic to me was that, well, Yelp was mad and causing a big fuss because they felt that Google was scraping their content and showing it in their places page and it was reducing the amount of traffic to their actual site. Right. The ironic thing is, I've only visited a Yelp page. Because of that, yeah. Yeah, I've never, ever, ever. If that content hadn't been scraped, a whole lot of their visitors would have never visited or even known about Yelp. Exactly. I mean, we've met people who don't even know what Yelp is. Exactly. And so, yeah, blank stare at Yelp, because now they're still complaining. Now, didn't Google try and buy Yelp or wasn't there something going on or there was something? I thought there was probably something where Yelp was like, nah, and we're like, yeah, well. Yeah, yeah, I shouldn't have done that. Yeah. And so, the crazy thing about it is now Yelp is still complaining because they said that the reviews have been removed from the places page, but if you search

Google Maps, the reviews still show up there. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. So, they're, like, Google's trying to phase out them and they also realize that there's value in having them there. That's interesting. Yeah, I think Yelp, y'all should blame stuff at y'all and y'all should fall back. Yeah. I mean, because y'all should see probably a dramatic decrease in page count, in page views. I think one thing that Yelp will always have that I don't think it's ever Google's intention is they do have proactive people, you know, people on the streets actually, you know, writing reviews and there's a newsletter that comes. I get a Yelp newsletter talking about things that are going on in the Houston area and that's where the real value of Yelp comes in. And maybe one of the reasons they'll be able to actually create more reviews, right? Because if they're interacting with people, I get a letter and I'm like, hey, let me try that place and then I get the letter next week. I'm like, hey, I should write a review about the place I went last week. So, it's that. I think it's Google's attempt at creating more user-generated content. Yeah. Matter of fact, let me read this. This is the excerpt that Avni Shai wrote, which is a place's product manager at Google. And she put, he or she, I'm sorry, I don't know. But based on careful thought about the future direction of place pages and feedback we heard over the past few months, review snippets from other web sources have now been removed from place pages. Rating and review counts reflect only those that have been written by fellow Google users. As a part of our continued commitment to helping you find what you want on the web, we're continuing to provide links to other review sites so you can get a comprehensive review of locations across the globe. And so, I think that kind of addresses the Yelp concern. So, there still are links. Now, it's Yelp got what they wanted, right? Now, it's a

link to them not showing it. Not just the review. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's great. I think there's some really good value there. I think it's interesting. I think it'd be a really good purchase for Google to buy a Yelp or... I don't think they will now. Yeah. You know, they probably would have, but now it's like, we'll phase you out. Yeah. We'll just take you over like we're going to do to Facebook. Yeah. G+. So, what do you think the effect is going to have on SEO? In regards to this here? Yeah. To them not showing reviews. I think it won't have that much of an effect on SEO. Because we do know that there are some SEO techniques that go out there and... In regards to local, yeah. To get your local places higher. If you want to crack that A through G listing... Yeah. ...then yeah, usually you need to have video images, reviews... Encourage your customers to do reviews. Yeah. And so now I think, well, two things. One, they're removing the reviews and she said it. You know, they want more Google user reviews. Right. Right? So, I think if your service is good, people will review it. We'll encourage you to review it. Like, we encourage you to review us. Yeah. Right? Secondly, I think there will be a plus button there. Yeah. Plus one will work similar to a review, I think. Yeah. You know, if I get more pluses, likes, right, then I think that'll have the same effect. But I think those listings that are already A through G, they may be suspect. Right. You know, they said if they had a whole bunch of Yelp reviews and some other stuff and now they're gone, it kind of opens up the door for some other people. Yeah. Well, and it'll be interesting because this will switch the marketing, you know, where invoices at the bottom of an invoice, it may have said, you know, like us on Facebook and review us on Yelp. Now it'll say,

review us on, get a G+. Review us on Google and plus one us. Yep. Absolutely. Plus one us. And that's been, actually, that's been my tag in our chat. I wonder if we're going to minus one somebody. Like a Facebook dislike. That's going to be in a rap song sometime, right? Hmm. Not plus, but minus. Yeah. All right. Oh, I was going to say, yeah, my description of myself is I plus one myself. All right. Blank stare news. That was a good one. That was a good one. All right. All the way blank. Blank. By the way, if you want to see our blank stare, you can go to Ustream. Well, the way to do it is go to ewebstyle.com slash SEO podcast. You can also get there from a link on our front page. That's just a quick way. You'll see the video box and right under it is archive. Yeah. Watch the archives. Watch the blank stare. Watch all of the other podcasts. Great information. And the videos are usually about a month ahead of the audio that's coming out. So, if you're listening to this. If you're caught up already. Then, you know, if you're jonesing for more, you can actually find it out there. But, the other way, what we're trying to do, and we've just had a lot of scheduling conflicts the last couple of weeks, is to have our content in the summers. It's at 10 Central Standard Time on Friday mornings that we air this live so you can tune in. So, for today. And the, for not, what was that? Except for today. Yeah. 1.30ish. And then, during non-summer months, it's at 9.15. Yes. So, we'd love to have you guys tune in. My blank stare was at our country, the United States of America. USA. Yeah. For the whole debt issue. Because, the report I just read that said that, the report they released said that USA USA has $73 billion of cash on hand. Right. Apple. You know, the makers of your favorite iPad, iPhone,

MacBook Pro, and all of that good stuff. Last, the June report, it wasn't even last quarter, it said at the end of June, they had $76 billion. On hand. On hand. And so, our nation's biggest technology retailer has more money than the nation. Does that mean they could buy us? Like, we could be the United States of iPad? Yeah. Or, I-USA. I-USA. With a little I. Just a subtle change to the flag. The stars will become apples. I-USA. Yeah. I-America. Wow. That's some serious cash. Yeah. That's some cash. And so, what makes it even worse is that, you know, so, there'll be a greater separation between the two each month because we continue to spend as a country and they continue to save as a company. To reap benefits. Yeah. And that's what I was going to add is I read an article that China has four times the population that we do and they only have two Apple stores. So, there's so much room for growth in China for Apple. It's just, it's insane. Yeah. But we got three in a 10-mile radius from here. Yeah. And we were talking about the service experience there is apparently phenomenal. And those are the highest dollar per square foot income retail locations on the planet. Which is awesome. The biggest one being Times Square. Wow. Punch in the face to Apple. Yeah. Good job. You guys are doing it well. I'm still using Android. I do use a MacBook Pro though, but yeah. I was talking to that guy, a guy that I was working with at one of the clients, one of our clients. He has got an Android. I was like, what do you think of the Android? He goes, ah, it's not an Apple. I know that. But what do you mean, right? And he goes, well, sometimes when he's, you know, expanding images with the pinch technique, his hand will hit one of the four buttons on the bottom. Oh, home or back or something. And it'll go somewhere else. And I've

never experienced that, but that's an interesting point. Yeah. Yeah. And it's an interesting point that Apple actually has a physical button. Interesting. Anyway. Anything else? We're good? I think this is it. All right. Thank you guys for tuning in. This has been the podcast number 115. You're listening to the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. Rob, you're going to get the door? Yeah. Thank you guys for tuning in. You are the ones that make us the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. Follow us at facebook.com slash eWebStyle, twitter.com slash eWebStyle, youtube.com slash eWebStyle. Send us an email at podcast at e-webStyle.com. Thanks, and bye-bye. Bye-bye.