Is Google merging with Starbucks?

First there was the buzz and now the buzz is about caffeine-you would think there may be an angle… Forget all the buzz about Google Buzz. Google’s business is Internet search. Disregard their browser, operating system, and other frivolities; their main business is the Google Search Engine. So why, oh why did they reorganize their entire process of generating search results? In case you haven’t heard on Tuesday Google announced a new search index called Caffeine. Google claims that, with Caffeine, their search results will be “50 percent fresher” than with the legacy system. I know with my traditional caffeine searching typically feels fresher!
Of course by “fresher,” they mean more up to date or real-time. How will they do this? Let’s start by discussing how Google works. When you type a word or phrase into the Google search bar, Google doesn’t go out into the live internet to collect results, rather it references an index of the internet that it has already created. To create this giant index, Google sends out “spiders aka Googlebots” every so often to visit websites. The spiders will visit a website, read all the content, and follow all of the links. Then, depending on the keywords being searched and the content and links in a particular website, Google determines where to rank a website in the results. Google has a video that describes this concept better here.
In previous iterations, Google used to visit websites every couple weeks because the spiders would visit the entire web before starting over again. This led to problems like a new site not being indexed on Google at all for weeks just because Google hadn’t seen it yet. With Caffeine, Google sends out spiders more often to take on smaller chunks of the web to keep the index as up-to-date as possible.
Google’s update to more “real-time” search reflects the evolution of the Internet. Social media and blogs are now known as social marketing and there are even some self-declared social marketing experts out there. Updates on Twitter, posts to Facebook, and articles published on blogs have become the new ways to reach people on the Internet. Whether these posts are for business or social, Google wants to keep up with the social marketing trend and real-time search.
This leads me to the point which is the importance of social media as part of your overall integrated web strategy. If Google is redesigning their entire process of search to include social media and real-time updates, social media must really be important. I try to convince most of our clients to utilize Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, and their blogs to promote their business and direct potential customers to their website. Google’s opinion and directive carries a bit more weight than ours though!
The key take away: Use your Facebook, and Twitter presence to point people to your blog and website to show off your personality. Use You Tube and Flickr to highlight events, speaking engagements, and more importantly you and your company’s staff. Use LinkedIn to make connections with other professionals in your area and in your industry. The underlying goal of each of these social media sites is to point people to your website. Google is making it easier to connect the dots between the two worlds of traditional websites and new/social media. Hopefully I’ve been able to highlight why social media marketing is important. Now grab a cup of coffee and start Tweeting!