The Forge

Google just announced the inclusion of real time search results that include Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and a number of blogs on their results pages.  This news isn’t shocking, as Google was a step behind Bing to tap the real time web and pretty much obligated to take a stab at it.

This is some big news, given that Google is by far the most utilized search engine.  One affected eco-system will be the realm of Search Engine Optimization.  While the old method of SEO primarily targets the ’static web,’ a new brand of Real Time SEO needs to evolve to address the ‘real time web’.

Real Time SEO

SEO is essentially maximizing the potential of a website to be indexed by Google based on a number of factors the algorithm takes into account when ranking sites, including the number of incoming links, title tags, keywords,  updated content, etc.

The Mountain View crew claims that real time search will utilize factors such as “author quality,” “probability of relevance” and “query hotness,” in order to determine which results pop.   These new factors, among others, will be the guiding principles of real time SEO, a process that is sure to be exacted from this point forward.

Sure, the social web – including twitter, facebook, myspace, and blog articles – have been an integral piece of SEO work for some time now. Utilizing social media pathways to provide extended exposure to a website has been important.  However, these efforts have always been somewhat ephemeral in comparison to the bulk of a search engine optimization campaign.  With the advent of Google’s real time web, this is about to change.

Real time search results could bring as much, if not more, traffic to a website than standard indexing on any given day.  This means making a website relevant and fresh through updates will become even more important.  There are sure to be other tactics and strategies that emerge as real time search evolves.  I’ll  be sure to keep an eye out for these results and post the findings.  In the meantime, feel free to let me know your thoughts on the subject!

Here’s to Google Docs

Open Collaboration

At your finger tips

One thing you should know about the Insight Forge team here in San Francisco: we’re all pretty big Google Document devotees.  We utilize Google Docs for pretty much everything – idea brainstorms, camping trip supply lists , brownie recipes, time spreadsheets, you name it.

If you own a small business, Google documents provides a forum for you to collaborate in real time between team members or directly with your clients.   For example, if you’re a chef and want to send a revised menu out to your staff, a Google Document would be the perfect place to express your thoughts.  You could add notes, and they could respond with questions to prepare for the menu’s release.

Most of the hitches we’ve encountered have to do with formatting between Google Docs and MS Word or MS Excel.   In an ideal world we would never need to use Word or Excel, and all of our writing could take place on Docs.

Google just released a new feature that allows complete folders to be shared, each containing multiple documents and spreadsheet under one umbrella.  This further promotes the easy collaboration and quick access that Google Documents excels at (no pun intended).

So… cheers to Google Docs!