With Google’s recent re-launch of social media based results, engineers from MySpace, Facebook and Twitter have created an open-source plugin as proof that Google is prioritizing its own Google+ results in search, moving away from the original mission of being a neutral directory of search on the Web.

The plugin alters Google’s new search results that showcase Google+, the goal of the plugin being to include social media from a variety of social networks such as Quora, Myspace, Foursquare, Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook.

The tool doesn’t use any third party data or APIs, instead it uses Google’s own search algorithm to present social media links that are most relevant to the search query. These results are present in three positions where Google+ results are presently featured: the search auto-complete bar, the showcase box for “people and pages” and the search pages themselves. The plugin reworks the on-page elements, allowing you to conduct a Google search that will present true social media content.

Of course there are cases where Google+ profiles will still be the most relevant in search, but in the majority of cases older and more authoritative pages will be presented, such as a celebrity’s Facebook page or an established Twitter account.

As written on the plugin’s website, engineers are hoping that the tool proves that with the new “upgrade” Google has created to present results, more generic searchers for things such as music or movies are wrongly prioritizing Google+ results over content that is more relevant.

For example, if you do a search for “Facebook”, Google will return a link to Mark Zuckerberg’s empty Google+ profile. Probably not what people are looking for.

While the plugin is collaborative and is not an official product of MySpace, Twitter or Facebook, the engineers express views that mirror sentiments that were raised upon Google’s “Search, Plus Your World” launch – the feature that they claim has fractured the search ecosystem.

Twitter was the first to make a criticizing statement about the move. In response to criticism surrounding Search, Plus Your World, Google stated that they would be willing to work with social networks to allow a user’s social information to also be present in search results. However, Google has also said that they require business agreements in order to gain access to the networks in order to use the data  – something that has been proved false through using Google’s own indexed data for the plugin. The plugin never goes outside of Google.com to gather information, including access to 3^rd party servers or APIs. All information presented has already been indexed by Google.

Google made some huge changes to its algorithm back in 2011, the first aiming and targeting spamming/scraping sites, followed by the larger Panda update targeting low quality sites. Google even penalized big players, as well – Overstock.com, LCPenney and Forbes were all hit for “shady” backlinking practices.

What does this mean for link building? Well, forget about low quality link building altogether. Seriously.

“But My Competition Is Doing it” Isn’t an Excuse

If you’re a link builder this may take some time to digest, especially if you’re researching your competition for a particular keyword and see that they’re dominating due to their 20,000 spam links.

There are a couple of things you have to step back and consider when face to face with low quality, high volume links when doing an analysis:

1. The links may not be the reason the competitor is where they are today. Maybe they have a strong enough brand and a good reputation that ranks them highly for a particular keyword.
2. If the first point doesn’t apply, then it’s literally a matter of time before Google decides to launch a lightning bolt from the heavens, giving no weight to their spammy backlinks. It will happen.

Let’s be honest here. Do you want to be that SEO company that drops on the ball on the next LCPenney or Overstock off-page strategy?

Defining a Valuable Backlink Opportunity

How do you determine the value of a potential link on a site? Google has its own criteria to define a low-quality site, but here are a few “warning signs” that illustrate it:

• Does the website have lots of ads? If the site is “ad rich” with leaderboards and text links everywhere, even advertising chunks, these guys best to be avoided.

• Lack of quality content. If you’re posting an article and it gets immediate approval, this likely isn’t the ideal article network for your needs. A lot of article networks approve spun and/or poorly written content, and even though you may create an amazing original article, Google’s algorithm likely won’t see your “diamond in the rough.”

• Content rich, low traffic. A blog with a Google PageRank of 6 may sound like an awesome spot to spam a comment. However, it’s important to keep site authority in mind. If the site doesn’t have a lot of good traffic and social sharing, it may be flagged as a potential site to be de-valued by Google in the future. When Panda was on a rampage, PageRank didn’t shield anyone. A lot of sites, including some with PageRank 7+ were hit. Even PR 9.

• Does the site have moderation? This is somewhat related to the above, but this is mainly directed at blog commenting and directories. If there are visible spam links throughout a page, don’t put yours next to it. Unless you’re trying to promote a spammy link, then go for it!

What You Need To Do

So, enough of the negatives. What should you be focusing on? Well, surprise surprise – content!

Nine in ten organizations are using blogs, infographics, whitepapers, webinars, and other forms of high quality content to create leverage for link building aimed at attracting natural, organic links. This content doesn’t have to just be about building links, either. You can use it to build leads by proving that the business knows what they’re talking about when it comes to their industry.

Have You Changed The Way You Link Build?

With all the Panda attacks, news, algorithm changes and penalties, have you begun to shift your link building strategy? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comment section below!

Well friends, we have a Christmas gift for those looking to do a little extra citation building this season! BrightLocal has curated a list of the top 50 citation sources for businesses in both the US and UK.

Over 1 Million Local Citation Sources Found

BrightLocal launched a massive citation analysis project between the months of March and May this year.

The analysis targeted more than 480,000 Google Places listings and were segmented across 40 separate industries and 100 locations. This citation information was then pulled into a database of more than 1.1 million separate citation sources.

The massive list was then filtered for quality, removing junk brand and business sites, resulting in a refined list of 15,000 quality citation sources.

Some of these sites have very powerful citation opportunities and are spread throughout Google’s citation index as a result.

For reference, back in June 2011 Google made the decision to remove citation content from Google Places listings, resulting in the information being hidden from public view.

Citations Are Essential For Effective Google Places Ranking

Make no mistake, even though citation domains are no longer visible in Google Places listings, they remain an integral part in local SEO ranking. Take a look at the chart below that illustrates the top 5 ranking factors from David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors survey.

The Significance of Citations

The 4^th most important local SEO ranking factor is considered to be the Quantity of Citations.

The two tables below list the top 50 citation sources for US and UK targeting. Google removed citation data before data could be gathered for additional countries.

The Frequency Count is the number of times the domain was found on 480,000 Google Places listings analyzed. Many domains were found multiple times per Google Places listing.

 Top 50 US Citation Sources

Top 50 UK Citation Sources

For convenience, click here to download a full Excel copy of the citations sources listed above.

 3 Helpful Tools To Assist With Citation Building

• CitationTracker 
• WhiteSpark
• Local Search Toolkit

Merry Christmas everyone!

Google has announced a massive change to its search ranking algorithm, one that has affected roughly 35% of searches. To improve relevancy, Google is now making an effort to determine whether a query will should return a result that is more up-to-date, presenting “fresh” search results rather than more established but older links.

Google considers user intent. If you’re searching for something like “olympics”, you’re more than likely looking for information related to the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics as opposed to older or more general information. Google search now has the intelligence to determine the appropriate result.

With the launch of Google+, posts are indexed and the network provides Google with real-time search data, signals that are needed to help determine both timeliness and relevance. Making changes to the search algorithm is one part of a bigger picture; social data adds a clearer picture of what’s happening throughout the Web now.

The recent updates are an extension of Google Caffeine, a search infrastructure that originally came online back in 2009. Caffeine fully launched in June 2010 resulting in “50% fresher results.” Google has refined “refreshness” by breaking content into three major categories:

Recent events or popular topics: things like breaking news, stories that may have been published within minutes.

Regularly recurring events: elections, sports games or conferences.

Frequently updated information: things such as product reviews.

Google’s Real-Time Search Improves Relevancy

Google is all about present useful, relevant results to users. As pictured above, Google’s goal is to drive us crazy. Just kidding. Search results are no longer about presenting a stack of information by rank, they want to use information and data to determine what results will be most relevant for each search query. This requires Google to index in real time. Caffeine has accomplished this from the crawling side, and Google is working hard to use publishing systems that are designed to alert the search index of new content much more quickly.

Social networks provide a ton of value for search, because users are doing the real-time publishing and alerting work on their own, making the indexing of that relevant content much easier for Google, Twitter and Facebook.

Google+ Powers Real-Time Search

Google had originally partnered with Twitter back in 2009 to launch real-time search. Unfortunately for Google, the deal expired and Google was forced to shut down real-time search this past summer. It simply wasn’t of benefit to either party. Twitter has acquired search companies for its own development purposes, and Google has launched Google+, their own social network.

With Google+ posts now present in search results, Google is working with its own real-time search using the social network. Through the collection of social signals, Google will be able to improve the “freshness” of its search results by adding a human touch.

Have you tried doing a Google search to see timely results? Check it out and let us know what you think!

With an Internet Marketing strategy, it’s safe to assume that your business objectives are heavily dependent search engine rankings and traffic from other websites back to your own. When looking at search engine rankings (SEO) themselves, the number of quality links helps to bring you and keep you at the top. Aside from that, you need links from reputable sites to help increase your own site traffic. More>>

With analytics and measurement becoming increasingly more advanced, there are companies out there that offer products that allow you to legitimately predict how your traffic will respond to your site’s content. Adobe has recently launched a new service called SearchCenter+, and another company, Visual Revenue, offers features that also aim to help you better optimize your content and ad buys for your site. More>>

Google is constantly striving to enhance products for businesses, and has rolled out a change for San Francisco, CA and Charlotte, NC – city pages will now highlight Google Places pages and Google Offers for small, local businesses within these areas.

City pages were introduced back in mid-June, available for Austin, Texas, Madison, Wisconsin; Portland, Oregon; and San Diego, California. City pages present website owners with a local dashboard, allowing them to see their local business analytics from products such as Google Offers and Google Places. More>>

With Google rolling out its Google+ social network yesterday, earlier today they gave existing test users the ability to invite others to join the network. For those unfamiliar with Google+, the layout is similar to Facebook in that it has news streams, photo albums, and more advanced features such as Circles, allowing you to ‘group’ your friends and, if you so choose, limit conversion to a Circle of your choosing. More>>

You may have noticed the sudden colour change in your navigation bar when using Google.com. No, this isn’t a new customization setting allowing you to customize the look and feel of Google. This is a black horse that will take you for a ride into the wonderful world of the Google+ Project. More>>

With Facebook Like buttons scattered across the web, Google has created a new and exciting product in an attempt to fire back at Facebook’s success: the +1 button. The button launched late last week as an extension of Google’s search engine, giving you the ability to “+1” search results and ads that you like. In the foreseeable future you will also be able to like websites and content. More>>