Google Search Redesigns Stock Quotes “Card,” Drops Competitor Links, Then Brings Them Back

Yesterday, Google launched a new design of the stock quotes “card” at the top of its search results. The new card dropped links to competing financial websites, something Google previously had in place since 2000. But after attention was drawn to the fact, Google quietly restored the links.

Google Operating System noted the change and the drop of competitor links yesterday,as did TechCrunch. And that’s what we saw when we first posted this story at 9:22am ET today:

Compare the new card above to the old one below, and you can see how the links to competitors were removed:

Google has provided stock quotes at the top of its results for searches on stock symbols since 2000, and those quotes have included links to competitors since that time.

A few hours after our story on this originally went up, however, Google updated the new look to restore competitor links. Actually, what seems to have happened is that it went back to the old design as shown at the top of this article.

Was the new design a brief test? A reconsideration after attention was drawn to removal of competitor links? We don’t know, but we’ve asked Google for more.

Postscript: A Google spokesperson sent us a statement, “We’re always experimenting with new formats and features for answers in Search, but we don’t have anything specific to announce here.”

Facebook Will Launch Graph Search For Mobile “Pretty Soon”

According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg during Facebook’s recent earnings call, Facebook’s Graph Search will hit mobile devices ‘pretty soon.’ It’s now been a full year since Graph Search was launched and mobile integration only makes sense.

According to cnet, Zuckerberg stated the following quote in regards to Graph Search on the call:

“Pretty soon, I think, you should expect us to roll out the mobile version of this. I think that that’s going to be an important step, because most of the usage of Facebook overall is on mobile, so we expect that that’s where engagement will really start to come from on Graph Search over time.”

This will be a welcomed feature for mobile as Graph Search seems like a product that was really made for mobile. Using quick search queries to see where friends are, and what destinations are nearby.

So what’s the reason that the rollout has been so slow? According to Zuckerberg there is great complexity in indexing more than 1 trillion connections and status updates. He further noted:

“As a number of people on the team…have told me, a trillion pieces of content is more than indexed in any Web search engine.”

Yahoo Adds Local Business Snapshots Next To Search Results

You’re gonna say to yourself, “That looks a lot like Google’s local search results.”

I’m talking about the latest interface change that Yahoo has announced: the display of local business information alongside search results.

The local business info includes basic business information, photos, hours of operation and some data specific to the business type — i.e., restaurant listings may show “Menu” and “Reservations” links.

Yahoo’s announcement says the idea is to “make it easier to get the essential facts for any business in the U.S. right on the search results page.”

The business data — they look like “cards,” to borrow Google’s current terminology — doesn’t show until you click one of the business listings in the local results. Here are two images showing a Yahoo local search result page before and after clicking one of the business listings. (You can click for larger versions.)

Pre-Click

Post-Click

You can see how the business information replaces the search refinements, map and paid ads in the right rail.

And if you agree that this looks like Google’s search results, don’t forget that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer used to be in charge of Google’s local products.

People, Videos, News: Twitter Adds New Search Filters

Earlier today Twitter announced that it was bringing a number of new search filters to the site. These include: people, photos, videos, news. There are also “people you follow” and “near you” filters that further refine results.

If one were to search for “Super Bowl,” results could then be filtered by those tweets that incorporated video — so you could see all the ads that had already been posted and tweeted. The utility of the new filters is fairly self evident.

The location filter is very interesting and holds considerable promise for users and for Twitter advertising. For example, I might do a search for “lunch deals” near me as a way to find relevant promotions. Then if this behavior became widespread it would be a meaningful channel for local restaurants and QSR to promote themselves.

Twitter may need to train users on use of these filters before marketers can realize their full value. It’s not entirely clear how many people search on Twitter today. However based on historical information, the volumes are probably significant. 

In 2010 Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said that the site had 800 million queries a day or 24 billion queries per month. To my knowledge those numbers have not been publicly updated.

Google Search OneBox Answers Are Getting More Detailed

There are several reports throughout the search community that Google’s OneBox answers or a form of the knowledge graph, are now more aggressive about answering even more complex questions with more detailed responses or answers. When we asked Google about this, a Google spokesperson told us, “we’re always experimenting with different types of answers, but we don’t have more details to share at this point.” Some questions Google attempts to answer now include: [why is the sky blue?] 
 [who ended world war 2?] 
 But some answers might be a bit off or unusual such as: [what are the largest mammals?]   

5 Tactics Super Bowl Advertisers Are Using To Boost Their Paid Search Campaigns

In the weeks leading up to game day, several Super Bowl advertisers have been employing paid search to help ensure their campaigns are found by the legions of users searching for “Super Bowl ads”. While the majority of Super Bowl advertisers still aren’t taking to SEM, those that are have been displaying some interesting tactics that are worth a look.

Here are five trends we’ve noticed from the Super Bowl advertiser ads currently running on Google and the Yahoo Bing Network.

1.YouTube is King

All but one advertiser in the examples below link  to YouTube in their ads on “super bowl” related queries, and even that lone advertiser links to YouTube when advertising on its own hashtag. As BusinessWeek noted, YouTube has become a Super Bowl goldmine for Google. Not only do advertisers drive huge volumes of traffic to the site, but they run ads on YouTube to attract even more viewers to their Super Bowl ads spots on the site.

2. Sitelinks Extend Real Estate For Top Advertiser

Many advertisers are using sitelinks (now part of the Google’s Ad Rank formula), yet Bud Light is also the only advertiser with ads routinely showing all four sitelinks. Bud Light is running multiple ads during the game and is using sitelinks to give users quick access to each ad on YouTube.Bud Light also appears to be the most active advertiser, so far, with paid search ads appearing steadily on Google and the Yahoo Bing Network.

3. Hashtags Come To PPC

Bud Light is incorporating its campaign hashtag #Upforwhatever in its PPC ads. And, Toyota, which had been running ads for its teaser (as shown from Google) below with a link to YouTube, has launched is now promoting the full ad in PPC (shown from Yahoo below). The new ads incorporate the campaign hashtag #Unbornify, which was not used on the teaser.

4. Extending Engagement With Sitelinks To Social Media

A handful of advertisers are also using sitelinks to drive users to their brands’ social media profiles.

In Toyota’s #Unbornify ad shown above the company has added sitelinks to its Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter profiles. While it’s unusual to see so many social networks included in one ad, this approach gives users the option to connect with the brand where they want to (and Toyota has instilled the hashtag in users’ minds no matter where they land).

In addition, all three of Toyota’s social media profiles linked to from the ads have been updated with the Super Bowl ad branding.

Nestle’s Butterfinger brand’s choice of links in its PPC ads also is interesting. It is using two sitelinks, one to the Facebook profile and the other to the teaser ad on YouTube. The main link, however, goes to the landing site for the new Butterfinger Cups product being promoted. Users can watch the teaser on the landing page.Note, the campaign hashtag is #CupTherapy, but is not being used by the brand in the ads or in any of its posts on Facebook.

5. Only Occasional Use of Brand Landing Pages

Most advertisers are driving users to watch their ads on YouTube, the viral measure of record. Yet, in addition to Butterfinger, AXE is another stand out example of advertisers using their own landing pages. In fact, AXE is gives users no other sitelink options in its “Make Love, Not War.” Super Bowl PPC ads.The AXE Peace landing page features a link to the powerful and sweet Super Bowl ad (shown below), but more prominently the landing page features a promotion for the #KissForPeace contest in which consumers are asked to post their kissing pics to Twitter with the hashtag for the chance to have their photo featured on a billboard in Times Square.

The current photo submissions are aggregated on the landing page, powered by digital agency Ideation.

It’s somewhat curious why the hashtag is not being used in the PPC ads as well. However, the brand is buying ads on both the Yahoo Bing Network and Google for “KissForPeace”. In these ads the main link is still the AXE Peace landing page, but they also include sitelinks to both Facebook and, yes, YouTube.

And looking at YouTube, the ad has struck a chord. The 60 second spot went up on January 14 and already has more than 3.1 million views. #KissForPeace has been tweeted nearly 1,500 times according to TweetReach.

http://youtu.be/63b4O_2HCYM

Other advertisers running paid search ads for “super bowl ad” queries include Audi, Volkswagen and Coca-Cola. Each of these advertisers simply link to their ads on YouTube. Volkswagen is at least teasing up its ad’s concept in its ad copy, “Explore what happens with a VW hits 100,000 miles”.

Let us know in the comments below if you spot other advertisers using paid search in interesting ways to promote their Super Bowl ad campaigns.

Google’s Matt Cutts: Don’t Try To Build Links Through Article Directories

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, posted a video answer encouraging webmasters not to use article directory web sites with the goal of building links.

The question posed was:

Links from relevant content in article directories — Seen as good or bad? eg. I link my beauty website from a cosmetic surgery article on say, Ezine? Would you do that?

Matt Cutts responded in short said that his personal recommendation is to not upload articles to article directories.

Matt also tweeted his answer to the question, saying “No.”

Google Takes Down Another Link Network, France’s Buzzea

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced onTwitter earlier this morning that Google has taken action on another “link network” named Buzzea.

His tweet read, “Today we’re taking action on a French link network that violates our quality guidelines (Buzzea).”

In addition, Matt added that they are working on a German based link network, “today France; Germany soon,” Mattadded.

This is the latest in a long number of link networks Google has been going after over the course of the past few years.

Buzzea is actually taking offense to have been called a “link network.” In a letter posted on the Buzzea site, Buzzea said in regards to being called a “link network” that they “oppose this assertion since we never stopped wanting to keep the ethical side of sponsored articles focusing on quality and natural links created.”

They did decide to call it quits and in their letter, they wrote:

This marks the end of an adventure for our team but also the end of our collaboration with thousands of publisher sites, agencies and advertisers who have given us their trust.

I suspect in the next week or so, we will see another tweet from Matt Cutts about the German link network they are going after.

For now, those who participated in Buzzea, should expect a notification in Google Webmaster Tools and a ranking reduction. It would make sense to remove those links immediately and stop participating in any link network or something that Google may perceive as a link network.

Study: 34% Of Google Search Results Have Rich Media, 9 Organic Links & 9 Search Ads

Conductor released a study that analyzed the ten blue links at Google showing 34% show rich media, nine organic listings and nine search ads.

34% Of Search Snippets Have Rich Media

The Conductor study showed that there was rich media on the search results page 34% of the time. The breakdown of rich media showed images appear on 28% of search results pages, news 9%, and shopping 1%. You have to keep in mind, rich media in search results is incredibly query-dependent. So, based on the sampling of Conductor’s study, 34% was the number they reached.

88% Of The Search Results Contain 9 Organic Results

88% of SERPs have 9 or more natural search links, with 73% having exactly ten organic results. This shows that while many say the ten blue links are gone, that is, indeed, not the case.

56% Of The Search Results Have 9 Search Ads

Finally, Conductor’s study says 56% of search pages now have 9 or more paid ads. I posted the breakdown of the study below. But, Conductor adds that despite there being so many paid search ads, “eye-tracking studies show that increasingly, searchers are tuning out ads and focusing on organic results.”

An Easy Way To Check What Referrer Data Google, Bing Or Yahoo Pass To Your Secure Site

With the three major search engines migrating their default searches to secure search, over SSL/HTTPS, marketers and webmasters want to know what referrer and analytics data will be passed to them and what won’t.

The majority of Google is secure search, Yahoo yesterday defaulted all searches to be conducted over SSL, and Bing is currently testing SSL search for those who opt in.

Testing Referrer Data From HTTPS Search To HTTP URL

The default protocol for passing referrer from an HTTPS URL to a non HTTPS URL is to not pass any referrer data at all. Both Yahoo and Bing comply with that, while Google passed google.com as the referrer in this case. How do I know? I tested it by searching Google, Yahoo and Bing for [what is my referrer] and then clicked on the www.whatismyreferer.com listing.

You see the listing in the search engine:

Then if you click on it, the destination page will show your referrer data:

Bing and Yahoo pass no referrer data at all in this case, as it should – due to the HTTPS protocol.

Testing Referrer Data From HTTPS Search To HTTPS URL

The default protocol is for HTTPS URLs to pass referrer data to another HTTPS, because it is being passed from a secure channel to another secure channel. Google doesn’t pass all the referrer data, they pass as much as they do from HTTPS to HTTP, as I cited in the example above. Bing and Yahoo do pass all the referrer data, as they should due to the HTTPS protocol. It passes both the referrer site and the query data.

But there is no way to search for an HTTPS version of a “what is my referrer” site. So I made one. Now you need to search for [what is my secure referrer] andhttps://referer.rustybrick.com/ should show up. As you see, the tool is on an HTTPS page, so referrer data can securely pass from a secure Google, Bing or Yahoo URL but do they? As I write this, Google shows it on the first page, towards the middle of the results. Bing and Yahoo have yet to index it but it will soon.

If you click on that from Google, it shows you that Google is only passing that the click came from Google but strips out any keyword data:

If you click on the search result from the secure Bing search results, you will see the full referrer details, including the referrer source, the query and more:

Why isn’t Google complying? I am not sure. They are encouraging webmasters to migrate their sites to run on SSL in their literature. But I know tons of webmasters that would make the switch overnight if Google would pass query data to them if they went over SSL.

Google To Replace Smartphone User-Agent To Improve Smart Phone Indexing

Google announced they are replacing the old smartphone crawler user-agent with a new one in order to make it possible for Google to index more smartphone content.

Zhijian He, a smartphone search engineer at Google said that the previous user-agent “made it impossible for Google to index smartphone content of some sites, or for Google to recognize that these sites are smartphone-optimized.”

The new smartphone user-agent crawler will follow robots.txt, robots meta tag, and HTTP header directives for Googlebot instead of Googlebot-Mobile. This will give webmasters more control, but Google said it should only impact less than 0.001% of URLs.

The new user-agent is launched in 3-4 weeks or so.

The new Googlebot for smartphones user-agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A5376e Safari/8536.25 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

The Googlebot-Mobile for smartphones user-agent we will be retiring soon:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A5376e Safari/8536.25 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)




Facebook To Start Running Ads In Mobile Apps, Building Foundation For Mobile Ad Network

Facebook announced january 22nd on its developer blog that it will begin running ads in third-party mobile apps, laying the foundation for what will likely become the site’s mobile ad network.

From the announcement:

We are running a small test to explore showing Facebook ads in third-party mobile apps. In this test, we’ll be extending Facebook’s rich targeting to improve the relevancy of the ads people see, provide even greater reach for Facebook advertisers, and help developers better monetize their apps.

Facebook says it’s working “directly” with a small number of advertisers and publishers, and is limiting this test run to a only a few partners.

While Facebook is not accepting any additional participants in its mobile ad program right now, the site has provided a sign-up form for anyone who wants updates on the program.

Samsung Galaxy S5: 7 Absolute Reasons Why You Need to Upgrade from Galaxy S4 or S3

Galaxy S4 begins ageing upon the official launch of Galaxy S5 on April, but the newest smartphone will come in such a steep price. Is the upgrade cost of up to €800 on the metallic Galaxy S5 worth leaving the Galaxy S4 or S3 this year?

Let's Talk About SpecsThe Galaxy S5 hardware specs are no joke compared to the close relation between the Galaxy S4 and S3 last year. For at least €800 or €650 (plastic), buyers will get a 5.25 inches of screen size, qHD 2,560 x 1,440 display resolution, Android 4.4 KitKat, 16 MP rear camera shooter, brand new Exynos 6 octa-core or Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 quad-core processor and other extras on the Galaxy S5.

Upgrading to the next-gen Galaxy S handset brings bigger screen, better display, improved RAM, no need to wait for Android 4.4 update, very well improve Exynos processor, much powerful camera than the current Galaxy S4 or S3 and new additional technologies.

Power Enhancements

Samsung adds 300 mAh to the battery of the Galaxy S4 and packs this on the Galaxy S5 which uses rapid charging. The battery of the S5 is made up of a special new type of Li-ion which stores 20 per cent more energy than the standard type in the market.

In addition, battery life is expected to last longer due to its new processor type that consumes 50 per cent less than the previous version and updated TouchWiz which holds an improved Power Saving tool. The Galaxy S4 or S3 may get these software improvements from the Android 4.4 update, but it is still better to get improvements right from the core.

Galaxy S Exclusives

Due to the new hardware technology of the Galaxy S5, expect great enhancements on Samsung exclusive apps and services. Fans of these apps can expect the Galaxy S5 to feature improved touch solutions with hovering detection, shortening the distance than previous versions on the Galaxy S4 and S3. The feature will be used by Air View.

Even if with an updated Android 4.4 KitKat-running Galaxy S4 or S3, users will not get the same snappiness and performance of these apps like that in the Galaxy S5.

New Added Security

The Galaxy S5 features a new security technology embedded right on the display. The fingerprint sensor scans a user's fingerprints on the screen instead of using the home key as what Apple did on the iPhone5S. This new tech isn't something the Galaxy S4 and S3 can replicate due to hardware limitations.

New UI, Themes and Icons

Those who love TouchWiz and already got bored with the current version on the Galaxy S4 or S3 may want to consider the magazine-style UI, new icons and new notifications on the Galaxy S5. Samsung decided to upgrade the "boring" design of TouchWiz from the previous Android version. The new UI is now available on Galaxy Note 12.2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1 Pro Editions.

Better One-Hand Operation

Since the Galaxy S5 boasts a bigger screen like the Galaxy Note, Samsung improved its one-hand operation mode. Users will be given the opportunity to choose which corner they want to use for this function that allows the use of one hand with all kinds of apps, notifications or calls.

Unlike the current one-hand operation on Galaxy Note devices, users may actually customise the one-hand function as if creating shortcuts on their favourite corner.

Android 4.4 KitKat is Installed

Obviously, Android 4.4 KitKat runs the Galaxy S5, but that's not the only point. The Galaxy S4 and S3 are still on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean which is currently plagued by major issues on several system functionalities, and users may have to wait until March for Android 4.4 KitKat.

The scary part is the possibility of another major setback that would not only delay the update but also bring a whole new bunch of problems like what happened with Android 4.3. For those who will get the Galaxy S5, there is no need to worry about buggy updates since it is the base software after all and definitely matches the hardware components.

The Galaxy S5 may be as expensive as the Galaxy S4 last year. However, this time, it is definitely carrying major upgrades on the Galaxy S line. Plus, it brags a metal version to go against Apple's iPhone, HTC One or Sony Xperia smartphones.

Yahoo Search Goes Secure, Taking Referrer Data — An Indicator Of Yahoo’s Popularity — With It

By default, searches on Yahoo.com are now done through a secure server. That means more protection for searchers but less data for search marketers about how they are receiving traffic. Most visits from Yahoo done via search will appear as if someone came to a site directly. As a result, Yahoo’s apparent popularity as a traffic driving source will appear to plunge. Yahoo also has left a loophole to keep sending search data to advertisers.

Yahoo Makes Secure Search The Default is our story on Marketing Land with more details about the shift. In summary, it’s still rolling out and by March 31 of this year, all Yahoo search properties worldwide should be using secure search.

This article here on Search Engine Land will focus on the loss of referrer data and what that means for search marketers.

Google & Not Provided

Search marketers are long-used to the idea that they no longer get so much search term data because of Google’s move to secure search in October 2011 for signed-in users:

• Google To Begin Encrypting Searches & Outbound Clicks By Default With SSL Search

That ushered in the era of “Dark Google” where search terms were withheld:

• Dark Google: One Year Since Search Terms Went “Not Provided”

Then last September, Google confirmed that it was moving all searches to secure by default, not just those who were signed-in to Google:

• Post-PRISM, Google Confirms Quietly Moving To Make All Searches Secure, Except For Ad Clicks

All of this has meant that the vast majority of searches done on Google, and which lead to a site, have the search terms removed or shown as “not provided” to those who make use of Google Analytics. Search marketers know a search happened on Google, but they don’t know what the exact term was.

Yahoo & No Referrers

So is Yahoo’s change going to cause a spike in “not provided.” No. That’s because Yahoo’s not sharing anything at all. In most cases, a search on Yahoo that leads to a publisher will reveal nothing — you won’t know the terms, nor will you even know the person came from Yahoo. It will seem as if they came directly to your site.

A similar thing happened with those making use of mobile Safari when searching on Google in 2012:

• Mystery Solved: Why Mobile Safari Searchers Appear To Come “Direct” To Sites Rather Than Via Google
• Mystery Solved: Why Mobile Safari Searchers Appear To Come “Direct” To Sites Rather Than Via Google

Data From Google But Not Yahoo?

How is it that Google secure search still lets you know someone came from Google but Yahoo secure search doesn’t? That’s because Google carefully constructed its secure search to actually make it less secure, to allow for general referrer information to pass (so you know an unnamed search happened on Google) and for actual search terms to pass for Google’s advertisers.

The stories below explain more about this in detail:

• Google Puts A Price On Privacy
• The Questions Google Refuses To Answer About Search Privacy
• How Google could have made the Web secure and failed — again

Potentially, Yahoo could make a similar change. But for the moment, the company says it has no comment about the issue, as the rollout isn’t complete.

As a result, Yahoo will likely see its popularity plunge in the stats used by publishers. It will be sending search traffic but not be credited for this. Of course, Yahoo’s real popularity has already plunged so much that many publishers probably don’t even pay much attention to the amount of search traffic it sends. But what little it does send is now going to appear a lot worse.

By the way, when it comes to searches that lead to secure servers, Yahoo appears to be following standard protocol and passing along full-referrers. However, as most sites are not secure sites, most publishers won’t receive this information.

Postscript: Yahoo tells us that in the case of ad clicks, as with Google, referrer data and search terms will continue to be passed along to advertisers over the web and in the clear.

What’s Up With Bing

Bing launched secure search this month, also, but it’s not on by default, as with Google and Yahoo. That means it will have very little impact on data being withheld. But if it goes on by default, as currently configured, it would act just like Yahoo and pass no data at all. Our story below has more:

• Bing Begins Supporting Separately SSL Search Site; No Referrers Pass

The Rundown

So how’s the landscape look on who passes what and when? Like this:

• Yahoo: secure search is the default, no referrers passed, except for advertisers
• Google: secure search is the default, Google referrer passed but search terms stripped, except for advertisers
• Bing: secure search is optional, no referrers passed

Google’s Matt Cutts: We Don’t Use Twitter Or Facebook Social Signals To Rank Pages

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, released a video today answering the question, “are Facebook and Twitter signals part of the ranking algorithm?” The short answer was no.

Matt said that Google does not give any special treatment to Facebook or Twitter pages. They are in fact, currently, treated like any other page, according to Matt Cutts.

Matt then answered if Google does special crawling or indexing for these sites, such as indexing the number of likes or tweets a specific page has. Matt said Google does not do that right now. Why?

They have at one point and they were blocked. I believe Matt was referring to Google’s real time search deal expiring with Twitter. Matt explained that they put a lot of engineering time into it and then they were blocked and that work and effort was no longer useful. So for Google to put more engineering time into this and then be blocked again, it just doesn’t pay.

Another reason, Google is worried about crawling identity information at one point and then that information changes but Google doesn’t see the update until much later. Having outdated information can be harmful to some people.

However, Matt does add that he does see Google crawling, indexing and understanding more about identities on the web in the long term. He used our Danny Sullivan as an example, when Danny writes a story here, the site is authoritative, so it ranks well. But if Danny posts a comment on a forum or on Twitter, it would be useful for Google to know that an authority posted on a specific site and thus it should have more ranking weight in Google.

While Google doesn’t do this now, we know they are indeed working on a solution for this.

Here is the video:

Google Adds A Knowledge Graph Popup To Search Results, But Is It Good For Site Owners?

Google has announced the formal rollout of a test that some searchers have been seeing for a few days now — a test that associates a Knowledge Graph popup with certain web pages in desktop search results.

The popup adds more information about certain search results, which sounds like it should be good for searchers. But, as I’ll show below, the implementation may not be great for site owners.

“You’ll see this extra information when a site is widely recognized as notable online, when there is enough information to show or when the content may be handy for you,” wrote Google’s Bart Niechwiej in today’s blog post.

Since it’s Knowledge Graph data, the popups rely heavily on Wikipedia. In my searching, I didn’t see a single example that didn’t have data from Wikipedia.

The data provides background on the website listed in the search result, and it appears in a small popup window that’s accessible from a clickable link on the second line of the result. Here’s a sample that I noticed on a recent search: 

In that example, each boxed area — “Wikipedia,” “Toronto Sun” and “Canoe.ca” is clickable and shows the Knowledge Graph popup.

Good News Or Bad News For Site Owners?

For site owners, this could be seen as a welcome addition because it adds extra information about the website and may encourage users to click the search result. There’s maybe also an element of accomplishment — i.e., “we’re important enough to get this special search result feature.”

On the other hand, as the screenshot above shows, the popup adds up to three extra links to the search result that don’t go to your website:

• The avatar/logo links to the site’s Google+ page
• The “Wikipedia” credit at the end of the text links to the Wikipedia page about the website
• The “Owned by” text links to a Google search (in this case, for “Québecor Média”)

If this becomes a popular feature with searchers, it could lead some to click away from the actual web page that Google included in its search results.

In any case, Google says it expects to show more information about more websites as it expands the Knowledge Graph.

Announcing the Brand New Beginner's Guide to Social Media

Welcome to The Beginner's Guide to Social Media!

The prevalence and importance of social media to web marketing can't be overstated. To quote a few statistics from the guide itself, 72% of online adults use social networking sites, and YouTube now reaches more U.S. adults aged 18-34 than any cable network. With that kind of traffic, it's no wonder marketers now use these networks to interact with their customers, and there's plenty more data to prove it. Google searches for "social media" have seen a steady rise since early 2009:

Data from this year's industry survey tell a similar story. In 2012, nearly 20% of respondents reported not using any social media tools; this year, that number was down to 11%. On top of that, 63% of respondents indicated that their demand for social media marketing has increased over the last year. Whether you've been in on the game from the very beginning or are just starting to wonder how social tools can apply to your own professional life, this guide was created to help take you to the next level. Click below to dive in, or keep reading for more details!

Read the Beginner's Guide to Social Media

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What's inside

There's something for everyone in here, from the fundamentals of how social media is used to details about individual platforms and overarching best practices. Here's a list of the chapters you'll find in the guide:

1. Introduction	7. Twitter
2. The Value of Social Media	8. Google+
3. Social Media Best Practices	9. LinkedIn
4. Social Media Metrics and ROI	10. YouTube and Pinterest
5. Finding the Right Social Network for You	11. Blogging
6. Facebook	12. Social Media Doesn't Stop There

The first section of the guide talks about social media in general, offering a plethora of best practices, a clear sense of the value of social media, ways you can measure your success in this endeavor, and recommendations on how to get started. From there, we dive into individual sites, slicing and dicing each of the major social media platforms and offering a consistent set of topics about each.

Here's a run-through of what you'll find:

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Key stats and demographics

How many people are using these networks, and what kinds of people are they? When it comes to figuring out which social networks are right for you to use, it helps to know who you might be able to reach by developing a presence. This section is designed to give you the who, what, where, and when of each platform. You'll find infographics with statistics as well as some more general info.

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How are people using the platform?

While the previous section covers who, what, where and when, this one covers the how and why of each platform. With uses ranging from establishing thought leadership to building customer advocates, this section (complete with innovative pro-tips) will give you a clearer picture of why you might want to choose one platform over another.

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Strategies and tactics for success

Okay; you've decided to dive in. Success comes in different ways for different platforms, though, so how do you maximize your chances of seeing early results? This section is all about starting you in the right direction, making sure you can learn from the mistakes of everyone who came before you instead of from your own.

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What success looks like

Many people learn better when they can see a great example of what they're going for, and while there's certainly no "best" way of going about your presence on any particular network, there's a great deal you can learn by examining some of the biggest success stories for each network. The sites listed in this section are all continuously finding new and innovative practices, so checking back in on them once in a while will help keep you up-to-date.

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Etiquette tips and guidelines

At their hearts, all of these networks are really just tools to facilitate different kinds of social interactions. For that reason, there exists an unwritten code of etiquette for each. Most of this code mirrors basic human etiquette, but in new environments it's easy to make accidental slips. This section aims to point out some of the ways in which folks end up harming the trust and authority of their brands by ruffling their audiences' feathers, reducing the chances of any accidental train wrecks.

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Recommended tools

While the platforms themselves are full of functionality, there are other tools on the web that can really take your social presence to the next level, offering you everything from scheduling functionality to insight and analytics not offered by the networks. For each of the major platforms, we list our favorite tools and talk about how they can help your efforts.

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Okay, great! Let's get to reading!