SEO vs SMO and how to TURN OFF Google Social Media Optimization

 Online Communities, social media, social networks  60 Responses »
Apr 172012
 

How to turn off Google personalisation (SMO) and go back to SEO BUT: SEO is dead, SMO rules. Search Engine Optimization has been hijacked by your friends and family (Social Media Optimization) and that’s a good thing.

When you do a search now on Google, Google checks your history and your friends’ histories and gives your results based on what you’ve looked at before and what your friends have shared on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, WordPress, and so on. Which is great if your friends have awesome taste, and less great if they don’t.  SEO is a waste of money, or will be very soon. If my results look like this already (see below) what will our search results look like in a year? 2 years? 10 years? SMO (social media optimization) is in, SEO (search engine optimization) is out.

SEO vs SMO or Search Engine Optimization vs Social Media Optimization

SEO is where your website page is ranked based on links coming in, links going out, and keywords connecting the web of pages connected to your website.  It’s a numbers game.

SMO is where your website appears in front of a customer ONLY if that customers friends and family have been visiting, sharing, tweeting about that page. So a group of developers in India will get different search results than a group of partiers in Sydney.

To TURN OFF Google personalisation type in

&pws=0

e.g. apple &pws=0

CORRECTION as pointed out by @frankinguyen on Twitter :)  : Add it to the search results URL, not the field.  google.com/search?q=apple&pws=0

Two examples of SMO vs SEO

FIRST SEARCH: Search Term: Laurel Papworth (My History)

Notice my little smiley face all over search.  My own history has hijacked search.

SECOND SEARCH: Search Term: Laurel Papworth &pws=0 (Vanilla search)

Notice the lack of little smiley faces. Notice that my own searches and my friends recommendations don’t filter for me. It’s not hijacked by friends, it’s hijacked by the most trafficked sites with good SEO experts advising them :) .

If we try another search

FIRST SEARCH Search Term: online communities (SMO – my friends’ sharing history)

Notice my friends little smiley faces – SMO means you get a different search result cos you have different friends. Plus, I’m Little Miss Popular on social networks so have more friends to change the results. You will soon, too.

Search Term online communities  &pws=0 (straight SEO search, no SMO)

Notice again that search now has as it’s top return not a link from my friend Fred Zimny but from general sites.

Paying for SEO vs SMO

Don’t bother paying SEO clowns to tweet and Facebook your site. It will only hijack the results of THEIR social network, not bring you more clients. Unless your clients are friends with paid-for-tweeters? Pure SEO will work for some time to come, until all your friends and family and colleagues have built up a body of Shares between them.  Good sites will always have good SEO and good SMO. Make sure you get good advice on SEO and SMO – don’t buy links hoping it will help your rankings for years to come!

Interesting?  For my class tomorrow… *waves from yesterday* … CAVEAT I am not an SEO expert, just reporting as I see things changing that affects Social Media. 

Social Network Identity: Anonymity, Pseudonymity and Accountability -Media140

 social media  89 Responses »
Nov 162011
 

One of the great mysteries of life is why Anon was such a genius in print and such an idiot online. And like all great mysteries, it’s worth whiling away an afternoon investigating the phenomenon. Lets explore Pseudonymity vs Anonymity and the repercussions with Accountability. And let’s not forget to look at the fact Facebook and Google make money from your online Identity. Yesterday, Salman Rushdie, real name “Ahmed Rushdie” ran afoul of Facebook. The man who has battled jihads and militant movements out to assassinate him, had his identity hijacked from him, in one fell swoop by Facebook. Apparently Continue Reading…

Social CRM with Google contacts and Rainmaker

 Online Communities, social media, social networks  14 Responses »
Oct 192010
 

What is Social CRM? Cloudcenter created Rainmaker to merge your Google Contacts with a social CRM tool – pulling and pushing info from LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. The business and personal voice combined as we become more social. CRM with bells!

Monetization: Facebook Revenue and Business Model

 Featured, Monetization, Money, revenue  17 Responses »
Jul 132009
 

2009 July – Facebook to make $550 million this year. Various revenue streams and business models of Facebook and MySpace including virtual gifts.

Australia Social Finance: List of Peer to Peer loans and p2p banks

 Featured, Money, Online Communities, peer2peer, social media, Social Media Australia, social networks  17 Responses »
Jun 012009
 

After the radio interview with Tony Delroy a few days ago, I’ve had an inordinate number of requests for information on social lending and microfinancing sites. Particularly Australian p2p banks. Remember a bank holds money that the community members have each – for example, salaries, or savings. Then the bank manager takes the community money and decides who to give loans to – back to a community member. Peer to peer loans (many members providing parts of one loan) simply disintermediates the aggregator/bank manager. Bypasses the middle man – the community members decide who they are going to lend the Continue Reading…

Pay for News vs Save The Media

 Featured, Media, Online Communities, social media, social networks  9 Responses »
May 072009
 

Just a quick follow up on Death Cycle of Newspapers – News Corp will charge for newspaper websites, says Rupert Murdoch - Current days of free internet will soon be over, says media mogul (The Guardian) Rupert Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation‘s newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a ­”malfunctioning” business model. Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an “epochal” debate over whether to charge. “That it is possible to charge for content on the web Continue Reading…

Twitter: Oprah, Ashton Kutcher and CNN

 Online Communities, social media, social networks, statistics, Twitter  5 Responses »
Apr 242009
 

Social Network Games and Twitter: MediaHunter very cleverly points out how fake the “Gosh, I’m almost as big as CNN” video from Ashton Kutcher was. The blog post outlines the time line and the “spontaneous” (read:NOT) nature of engagement from all concerned, including the company that donated just so happened to be able to donate over 1000 billboards for the stunt. To me, this week’s Twitter activities appear to have been a very well orchestrated publicity stunt with several beneficiaries. In fact, you only need to look at the beneficiaries to begin realising how all this came together. Heh, but Continue Reading…

Job: SEO/SEM Expert Reputation Management in social networks

 Jobs, Online Communities, social networks  17 Responses »
Mar 252009
 

I love these peer to peer job sites like guru.com Fix my reputation in online communities and social networks please! Interesting job for PR slash SEO people on Guru.com: Profile ID: 828294 matches… Title: SEO/SEM Expert Reputation Management Project ID: 498259 Category: Website Design / Website Marketing Description: SEO group is seeking an SEO experienced professional willing to telecommute and assist 2 seo/sem employees, working from home in Asia. They speak fluent English and are very efficient. Our focus is exclusively reputation management. Individual will be responsible for providing direction and assisting them to more effectively repair our client’s online Continue Reading…

Australia: AdAge Power150 Top Bloggers

 blogs, Marketing, Media, Social Media Australia  20 Responses »
Feb 242009
 

Who are Australia’s top marketing and media bloggers? Not decided by the local BlogMafia -heh – but internationally recognised and independently evaluated? This is the list. Again. Six months on. My original blog post, exactly six months ago. Where are we up to? For Lee Hopkins, who asked today on Twitter about getting access to an updated Top Marketing and Media bloggers list for Australia. As you can see, their ranking in Australia is left column, then the blog name, their ranking in August last year, their ranking today, and for fun, their Twitter ID if I have it handy. Continue Reading…

Australia: David Galbally vs Social Media

 Featured, Law, Online Communities, press, Social Media Australia, social networks  60 Responses »
Feb 192009
 

I think that one of the issues that David Galbally, QC and other lawyers of his ilk is that because they don’t understand social media, they don’t understand where it’s going. So calls to turn Facebook off in Victoria or to insist Facebook removes photots and videos and material relating to alleged suspects is niave at best. Irrespective what the courts say. Everyone had an opinion on what I should’ve said during the 7 minute piece in which I got about 3 minutes   Including: people can bypass with proxies, they will use other services and so on. But it Continue Reading…

Keep Facebook Private

 consumer gen. media, Facebook, Featured, social media, Social Media Australia  9 Responses »
Feb 032009
 

Facebook is used (mostly) by members as a gated community. They want to keep information within the network, not have it published in the newspaper. News.com.au sucks sometimes: Stinging status leads to Facebook fracas WE are nominating this the Facebook fracas of the week. Names have been changed and bad words bleeped to protect the guilty. Have you seen a bigger row recently? Let us know in the comments below. It all began with a status update. Then it went downhill fast.. This sort of thing disturbs me – I know, I know, we the former passive readers are now Continue Reading…

YouTube: At war with Warner Music Group

 consumer gen. media, social media  11 Responses »
Jan 252009
 

Just kinda bookmarking this one – at war with your customer and forcing your customer to go to war with you, en masse. Warner Music Group are forcing Google’s YouTube to pull videos that have any recognisable Warner music in it. Background, homage, mashups, clips, concerts, cover’s, singing the shower, you name it, gone. I know that the musicians are mostly also pissed with this too. Gary had a machinima pulled – one where he got the musicians permission – and had to push YouTube to put it back up. They did – after the musician also stepped in.  This Continue Reading…

AIMIA Social Media (Bandwagon) Awards

 social media, Social Media Australia  2 Responses »
Jan 222009
 

Bandwagon – AIMIA’s (Australian Interactive Media Association)  term for social media, not mine, never refuted or retracted. Ah well.  The Awards page.  Social Media people – remember, this is limited to a hundred or so members, most of whom are agencies so don’t take it too seriously. Most social media – good stuff – is coming up naturally, and won’t be thought of as mainstream award winning stuff. Always think when looking at a campaign, “what can the audience do with the social media campaign assets?” If all they can do is pass it on as a viral video, it’s Continue Reading…

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