Google Social and Bing Twitter Search

I have been trying out Google Social Search and Bing Twitter search. Both were announced at the Web 2.0 Summit on October 21. Choosing such a pretigious event to announcing it I was quite excited about it. No need; Google Social Search is will probably join the other Google products that are fun to use but serve a need that does not exist and Twitter search on Bing is…. well, Twitter Search except on Bing.

Google Social Search in a nutshell it allows you to search your social media friends for information on your search term. Admittedly the idea of getting information from a trusted source seems very attractive but there are two limitations to this service. Firstly not all my social media friends are really trusted sources as I follow different people for different reasons. Secondly if searching for opinions on a particular subject I would like to see opinions from a wide source, perhaps finding more friends in the process. I do not like the idea of excluding sources when searching. The most successful Google products have always filled a obvious need and are by and large easy to use.

Bing Twitter search will be a more useful tool. It is still in beta so it is still a bit slow an incomplete but with Bing technology improving the search results such as getting rid of duplicates and using their algorithm to return the most relevant results it should prove to be a very valuable search source.

I can see where Google and Bing are going with social search as it brings into the search results the element of trust, and trust is going to be a critical element of search in the future.

PageRank Dropped from Webmaster Tools

Google has dropped the PageRank report from Webmaster Tools. We have always treated the PageRank of a site as one of the starting points when looking at how a site is doing on Google. If the PageRank is low or nonexistent then this can be an indicatior of something wrong. Equally a high PageRank is always a good indicator of quality incoming links.

Google themselves have been playing down the importance of PageRank for a while now. The following is a statement from Google:

We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.

Although Google has removed it from Webmaster Tools it is still available on the Google Toolbar. Sometime ago Google was taking feedback on removing PageRank from the Toolbar but did not take it any further. There is some feeling that they won’t remove it as it is too much part of the Google branding.

From a Web site owners point of view what does the down playing of PageRank by Google mean? The building of quality incoming links is and will continue to be important. However, the obsession with which some site owners (and their SEO companies) treated the importance of PageRank will now be seen to be misguided. In other words it is an important consideration but not to the exclusion of other considerations.

Site owners should continue with creating new and interesting content, that has always been the case. Measurement of the value of this will be an increase of incoming links, increase of traffic and increase in conversions. Simple.

However I am somewhat saddened by the lessening of PageRank as a feature as it was what made Google different and a better search engine ten years ago. PageRank went from an exciting concept, to an important day to day tool to now yet another element in an extensive universe of factors of what search engines use to determine the relevancy of your Website.

Twitter 1 Carter-Ruck 0

It was fascination to be part of the Twitter adventure today where the gagging order injucting The Guardian to stop publishing the question asked by MP Paul Farrelly regarding the company Trafigura and the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast.

There is still a lot to come out, such as how it was possible to get an injunction in place that stopped the reporting of Parliament is not clear. The supremacy of Parliament is unquestionable and it is not possible to sue anyone for what they say in Parliament. Regardless, the attempt by Carter-Ruck was futile as there was no power that could stop the story being spread on the blogosphere and Twitter at lightening speed. If this was to protect Trafigura it has only achieved in making them reviled by a large section of the country.

Carter-Ruck has a infamous history in legal circles for the tactics they employed in ensuring the privacy of their clients stayed private while charging a very lucrative fee. An article in the very same Guardian http://bit.ly/15OKAH by Carter-Ruck ex-Parter is enlightening. I wonder if Carter-Ruck will be sending a bill to Trafigura? Carter-Ruck are obviously a clever bunch but did they even consider the force that is known as Social Media when advising their client? Apparently not.

We will be seeing more and more stories being spread this way. When appalling behaviour is revealed as in the case of the dumping of toxic chemicals in the third world for profit this can only a good thing. But what happens when the story spread is false and causes harm or damage? Will it be possible to manipulate such stories?

The genie is well and truly out of the bottle and we are at the beginning of a very open and publicly controlled news sources in Twitter and blogs. We will not always get it right but how will we behave when we get it wrong?