So, Google rolled out Google Buzz in my Gmail account last night. I thought I would share my experiences since and my thoughts on their impact and its future. There are a few positives towards the end too, I promise! Here are a few quick links: 

• The negatives
• The positives
• Google’s positives
• Mobile Buzzing
• A summary

My “oh Buzz off” moments: 

1. Connected sites
   Google decided to connect PicasaWeb and my Flickr account automatically. I disconnected both twice, but they resurfaced each time. So far I’m winning. Watch this space.
   Google also appears to have ‘found’ my YouTube page. Naturally as they own YouTube, this isn’t a massive surprise, just not expected. My YouTube channel does not have the same name as my Gmail account, however… Some clues can be found on my Google Profile page where Google has clearly done some sniffing around to find the following sites. Note however, I have NOT used my Gmail account to sign up to any of these sites. I can only assume Google has been reading my email:
   
2. Followers
   I was automatically following one person and already being followed by another. Both seemingly random choices of people since there are others who I email/tweet/converse with more frequently. Interestingly, the following day, I got a notification saying that “1 more person is following me”. Actually it was that person who was already following me in the first place… Hmm.
   
   On using the “Find people” option to select people to follow, I learned of people’s multiple Gmail accounts. I could follow all of them if I wanted. People like to have separate Gmail accounts for many reasons – we email different people, we have different websites that require different profiles for services such as Analytics or AdWords. We keep them separate for a reason…
3. Email address
   My advertised email address is now my Gmail account one. This is not how I want it to be. I use Gmail to collect my website’s email so it sort of serves as a backup for my email and is easier to use on my iPhone. But I’d rather my primary website email address was advertised. But I can’t for the life of me figure out how to do that…
4. Contact groups
   It’s great that you can separate contacts out into Friends, Family, Colleagues and Contacts so that you can pick and choose which updates are shared with who. That’s OK… if you’re a Billy No Mates. Otherwise, that’s most of an afternoon’s-worth of sorting out your hundreds or thousands of contacts into groups. Don’t forget to keep the groups up to date…
   
5. Syncing contacts
   Were you one of those people who synced your contacts between your iPhone and your Gmail account? Yep, all those contacts are now connected via Gmail to Buzz. I have taxi numbers as contacts in Buzz now, along with my Gran and my Doctor. Some contacts don’t even have an email address, let alone be bothered to know what Google Buzz is. But my point is that some groups of people you just don’t need “to Buzz”.
6. Confusing follower/following counts across Google Properties:
   Here’s a screenshot of my follower/following count on Google Reader:
   
   And here’s a screenshot of Google Buzz at time of writing:
   
   I just “Shared” a post from my Google Reader. I’m a little confused as to who is going to see that post. I’m guessing 61, but there is almost definitely going to be some crossover here. Not fantastic for tracking reach.
7. There is now a new tab on my public Google profile showing all my updates on Buzz:
   
   That’s ok. I guess. I can see some people not realising this and posting public updates to their page. As this is higher profile this should be on people’s online reputation management radars.

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However, the positives, as promised: 

1. I like the simple interface, the ability to Like or Comment is very easy. Very Facebook and FriendFeed-esque, but let’s let that slide. These are good features.
2. I like that I can select which sites to connect and that other people’s updates clearly state the source, i.e. Google Reader.
3. I like the simple drop down menu. Very intuitive:
   
4. I like the stacked appearance of updates to give you a chance to read less active users’ updates:
   
5. I like the fact the page refreshes itself using Ajax so I can see comments etc. as they come in. They are easy to identify as well with the aid of a yellow line and fade-out highlighting of the whole post/comment:
   
6. You DO actually have the option to turn Buzz off, but it’s on by default:
   
7. Adding a comment to a shared item in Google Reader is great. This is why we like the OLD retweet feature of Twitter rather than the new one. Adding our own spin:
   
   Here’s one I wrote earlier:
   
8. Posting a link: USE A URL SHORTENER!
   As you can see below, Google still follows the redirects, retrieves the page title, snippet, images etc:
   
   But the link itself is kept as your shortened version. This is essential for tracking your social media efforts:
   

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Mobile on-the-hoof Buzzing 

1. My location wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t work out how to create a new location for my office or link to any existing one. I thought it might link up to Google Local Business Centre listings, but a search for my company proved fruitless.
   
2. Using the page http://buzz.google.com/ on an iPhone is basically a similar experience to an iPhone app. BUT it’s not an app! Google gets around publishing an app in the App Store by encouraging you to add a Home Screen Shortcut to your phone, like you can with any website, as follows:
   

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Pluses from Google’s point of view: 

1. Money! Advertising on Gmail is now more noticeable as they appear above all updates like so:
   
   From a paid search perspective, I’d be interested to know if you could control where your ads appear on Google accounts. You might prefer more informal ad copy here to blend with the social conversations that follow it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ad section was enhanced further.
2. One giant step for Google…
   Google is going to rock the boats of many other social networks out there with this move. Especially FriendFeed and Facebook. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to Twitter too, although I suspect the superfluously simple interface to prevail.

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To summarise 

I’m a little unnerved by how much Google really knows about people. I sort of suspected they knew all that information already or had the ability to find out, but this proves it. This proves that they have tremendous power. Check their list of properties if you want to see what could potentially be linked in the future: Calendar, Docs, Earth, Finance, Books, Talk… and even Translate. Don’t forget they’re a domain registrar and have an affiliate network too.

While this IS basically another platform and since writing it I have proved myself wrong in several ways, this is a little like my Search Cowboys post where I talked about leaving the platform behind and the is the potential to bridge the gap – socially – between different language speakers too.

Its prospects? Google has a massive, pre-existing user base with Gmail. There will no doubt be more uptake of Buzz than there was with Wave due to the immediate integration with Gmail. However, there are some privacy issues, as articulated by @wilks below:

My honest opinion? I think it will stay. As much as I hate the whole Google as “Big Brother” concept, and it is yet another social network to keep checking and updating, it does have a few cool features. And they are kinda fun to use. Occasionally

Google Buzz Features Review: what’s all this Buzz about then? is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

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As Malcolm Coles just posted, and several others have noticed, Google removed the top horizontal menu in their search results pages (SERPs), and also removed the link to log in for around a day. Was this a glitch or was Google testing for a future update?

Now, I like change and especially to see what Google is up to when it experiments, but they can’t really think this would be a change for the better? What are the potential implications of this?

Universal Search

It’s likely to mean people rely much more on mixed results for images and videos for example. But I am personally a fan of being able to flip easily between other search types such as News, Images and Maps. I don’t want to have to trawl through irrelevant types of search results.

Personalised Search Results

When searching, especially when I want to test results for a particular keyword, seeing that I’m logged in in the top right hand corner of the SERPs acts as a reminder that the results I’m seeing may well be peronalised just for me and therefore a less accurate representation of what the average user will see. Removing this log in/out link means that more people will probably forget to log out, Google collects more data from your searches, and presents you with personalised results unbeknownst to you.

Google Denies Users Choice

Ultimately it would force users to use the new drop down “Show options” menu, but this does not offer the same full range of options. Instead it currently only offers Videos, Forums and Reviews. Of course users can hit the ‘back’ button on their browsers and start again as the menu remained on Google’s homepage, but that would have been a pretty bad user experience.

If this change stuck, it would have been a fairly fast transition and I’m not convinced it would have been well thought through. Could this be another knee jerk reaction to Bing’s popularity and moves lately? Bing interestingly has both top and side navigation menus as standard. Choice.

Google’s 24 Hour Navigation Test Dictates User Journey is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

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I’m going to be honest. I wasn’t happy with my previous post “Website Referrals: Who’s Linking to You?“. I wanted to delve much deeper into researching inbound links, but I also wanted a short and snappy post that visitors could read and find useful on the fly. After thinking a while, I decided to settle with adding this extra post with more information and tips which essentially makes this Website Referrals Part 2!

Level: Beginner / Intermediate

Discovering Inbound Links

There have been some fantastic posts about discovering inbound links to websites, including competitive link searches, so I don’t want to simply rewrite what has already been said. Instead I’m going to outline the main methods and provide some starting points.

Google

Arguably the most popular search engine, it seems like the perfect place to start. Wrong. While Google provides a method to discover inbound links to a specific domain, its data is innaccurate at best. So what’s the benefit of using Google at all? If you are optimising specifically for Google, it’s useful to know which websites Google is currently aware of that are linking to you. In the search bar:

• link:www.domain.com or link:domain.com – finds the websites that Google is aware of that are linking to the specified domain
• www.domain.com or domain.com – finds instances of the specified domain being mentioned in text form (not necessarily linked)

Yahoo!

Yahoo! has the most accurate data on links and should be your main port of call when finding which websites are linking to you. To get the most out of Yahoo! use SiteExplorer. In the search bar:

• linkdomain:domain.com – site:domain.com or link:http://www.domain.com/ – site:domain.com – find web pages linking to the domain, excluding internal links within the website itself.

MSN Live

MSN isn’t as good as Yahoo! as its data is fairly incomplete, but it is reliable and it’s useful to know which websites MSN is aware of that link to you. In the search bar:

• linkdomain:domain.com -site:domain.com

Website Analytics Software

Using tracking software such as Google Analytics can also help you track websites that are linking to you, but they will only do this once a user has followed the link and not before. However, what the software will tell you is which websites referred the best quality visitors – that is those visitors who interacted the most with your website and converted.

Website Referrals Part 2: Discovering Inbound Links is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

Related posts:

1. Website Referrals Part 3: Useful or Useless?
2. Website Referrals: Who’s Linking to You?
3. 5 Online Marketing Motivators

As it is now 2009 I wanted to reflect on 2008 and my Internet marketing achievements and look to see what goals I could set for 2009.

2008 began by making the decision to move into online marketing. Having previously been a professional website designer for over 8 years, the step into online marketing was one of my best decisions yet. My first step was to enroll on an online course with the Chartered Institute of Marketing and gained a Professional Development Award in e-Marketing in July. Becoming a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing alone has opened many new doors; I’ve been to as many seminars, workshops and networking events as I possibly can and loved each one as they’ve either given me the chance to learn something new, meet other marketeers or teach people about Internet marketing.

As a web marketing consultant I also became a Qualified Google Advertising Professional. Simply studying for the exam was a great experience – it’s not often you have the chance to get a qualification from one of the key players in your industry. I also created web marketing packages to offer to clients for services such as search engine optimisation, Google AdWords, email marketing and more, and gave one-on-one training sessions.

One of my most exciting achievements of 2008 has to have been speaking at web marketing seminars. It’s something I’d never thought I’d want to do, but I got an incredible kick out of it. Having the opportunity to actually talk to a room of professionals about their understanding, concerns and needs for online marketing was fascinating. I came away able to drastically improve my approach to my current and prospective online marketing clients by understanding them better and improving our packages and support.

I’d had experience of search engine optimisation (SEO) as a web designer in the past, but never had the chance to focus 100% on it, research it to the depth I have now or create and implement an SEO marketing plan. In 2008 I did exactly that and got a new website ranking on page 1 in Google for its top 10 keywords, from initially appearing on page 10, in just 1 month. A personal best (so far – watch this space!) and something I wasn’t even sure was possible in such a short time frame, but with a lot of planning and hard work, including with the great team I’ve been working with, we did it.

So what does 2009 hold for online marketing? I’ve been using more and more relatively new services such as Twitter, and as everyone is predicting, those services will undoubtedly become more and more widespread. It won’t be long before I’ll be creating web marketing packages for my clients that will include them in their overral marketing plan. Customer relationship management and online PR is made so much easier with those services, and taking advantage of them will be key to keeping a competitive edge online in 2009.

As for my career? Hopefully, much more of the same rewarding experiences and achievements. I’ve learned that qualifications in marketing are great for creating firm foundations of knowledge, but it’s the experiences that are the most valuable. Therefore, I’m going to be grabbing every opportunity that comes my way with both hands and giving it my all. But also, just as online marketing creates a unique two-way communication channel between businesses and clients, I’m going to make sure I give as much as I get in this industry by contributing where I can to research, development and training in online marketing and become a true online marketing evangelist!

What are your career goals or online marketing predictions for 2009?

Online Marketing and Me: 2008 to 2009 is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

Related posts:

1. 5 Online Marketing Motivators
2. Online Marketeers and Technology Professionals: Get Offline!
3. My SEO Workshop Slides from the Chartered Institute of Marketing Conference