While it may be true that Facebook’s venture into the public domain is the most significant internet news of 2012 so far, it would appear most serious investors are underwhelmed. It’s difficult to imagine an impressive initial public offering (IPO) of $5 billion would be anything but spectacular and yet many are tentatively sitting on their hands. When Google went public in 2004 with an IPO filing of just $2.7 billion dollars, just over half of Facebook’s own IPO filing, a frenzy of interested investors stormed the SEC’s EDGAR site causing a legitimate crash of a government website; all in an attempt to read Google’s Form S-1. Since then the juggernaut that is Google has made many investors richer than they could’ve hoped, stocks spiking in 2007. However the few that were late to the party received less than impressive returns and it seems no one wants to be late to this party.

Everyone wants a slice of the social media pie. After all, it has surpassed the label of being a trend and has stood its ground and passed the test of time. Google has been trying to join the social media gang since its failed attempt with Buzz and also with Wave. Its newest attempt on becoming a permanent passenger on the social media band wagon is Google Plus. With the ink still fresh on the wall of the web there is an array of different opinions on whether Google Plus will stand the test of time, what its influence will be on the current big dogs of social networking and what influence it will have on SEO.

Google last week announced the launch of 2 new social engagement reporting tools that have been included in Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. This comes shortly after the launch of “Me on the Web”, Google +1 and Google+ which have been great motivators of getting more and more people to sign up to a Google account, effectively giving Google access to a lot of the information necessary for enabling social engagement tracking in Webmaster Tools and Google analytics.

Let’s take a brief look at the latest reporting tools introduced by Google:

1. Google +1 Metrics in Webmaster Tools

Google has introduced what they’ve called the “+1 Metrics” section to Webmaster Tools. This section essentially gives webmasters the ability to see how Google +1 is affecting the traffic coming into their site from Google’s SERPs. The +1 Metrics are split into 3 sections:

Google recently announced a new service that is now available to all Google account holders. “Me on the Web” is supposedly a product aimed at assisting all Google users with the ability to more easily control their online reputation on the web via an easy to use interface that gives one the ability to receive alerts whenever their name or profile of some sort is mentioned. But in a recent post by Danny Sullivan, Danny reveals some interesting insights into what he thinks Google’s real motivation behind Me on the Web is.

Let’s start by taking a look at Me on the Web:

Now, the more tech savvy amongst us will be screaming out “what about Google alerts?” and the truth is, they have a point; Me on the Web is very much like Google alerts, but is far more accessible and easy to use. Below is a screenshot of the interface that comes with Me on the Web and the numerous options and filters that are available:

Moderator:
Andy Atkins Kruger – WebCertain

Speakers:

Eric Papczun – Performics
John Mueller – Google
Richard Falconer – Bigmouthmedia
Preston Carey – Yandex

Some Golden nuggets from Andy

1. Google is dominant BUT there are other engines to watch. Baidu and Yandex stand out, Seznam, Naver, Bing and Ayna are all up and coming.
2. What is Geo-Targeting? Making sure you see Pages from Germany – Pages in German.
3. How does Google filter the web? a) by google domain, b) by language
4. Google.co.uk vs Google.de search for “Lufhansa” shows very different results. “Billigflug” Austria vs Germany shows different results.
5. Keyword language tag “Casseroles” in English shows a dish, in French shoes a pot. So keywords have a language tag associated.
6. From targeting choose whether you want to target a country or a language first

Moderator:
Massimo Burgio – Global Search Interactive

Speakers:
Bas van den Beld – State of Search
Marcus Taylor – SEOptimise
Jim Yu – BrightEdge
Cedric Chambaz – Microsoft

Bas van den Beld – State of Search

SE’s are trying to figure out user intent and they are trying to give you the best and most relevant info. This can be difficult as a computer at home can be used by multiple people. So they are trying to work on user experience for example showing calories on recipes

Google has chosen two directions to join search and social:

Firstly through Page Rank (Which is essentially a social signal). Google is good at making connections. So they figure they can work out connections between people as well. As Eric Schmidt said :-  “We know where you are, we know what you like”

No matter what updates happen or what engines you work with one thing common to all is the underlying keyword research.

Moderator:
Mikkel deMib Svendsen

Speakers:
Christine Churchill – Key Relevance
Richard Baxter – SEOGadget
Lasse Clarke Slogaard – MediaCom Denmark
Kevn Gibbons – SEOptimse

Richard Baxter – SEOGadget

This presentation is not so much about collecting data, rather on how to group it and make it actionable. By grouping phrases you can spot priorities in search behaviour that allow you to confidently construct site architecture.

Speakers:
David Sottimano – Distilled

David Scottimano and John Straw

John Straw – Linkdex

David Sottimano – Distilled

We are all faced by the  typical CEO’s question:– why are we not number 1?

As experts we can give a technical answer. But we actually need a clear answer, not just stats. They need something to work off, an actionable process. Don’t waste time. In competitive analysis just find they key things that matter.

1. Identify your competitors (Online in the SERPS not offline) then educate the client. We have a template to do this work that shows us who is in this space (http://dis.tl/smx-london ). Reviewing every few weeks shows the up and coming and also people in this space who are not selling your products who are this possible link targets.