1. Tapping Into Google’s Love Of Freshness
John Shehata (@JShehata)
Director of SEO & Social Media @ Advance Internet
Oct, 2010
SEO Friendly Spider
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2. CONDÉ NAST
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3. Advance Internet
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4. Newspapers
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5. Does Google Care about
“Freshness” ?
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6. Absolutely …
 Google caffeine / mayday update
 Google reindexing news (within 12 hours)
 Google offering “more search tools”
 google.com/realtime
 Pubsubhubbub (PuSH) “near instant”
http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/
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7. Google Freshness Boost
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8. How Google Determines
“Hotness”?
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9. Sudden Increase (spike) in
 Search Query Demand
 Number of Blog Posts
 Hot Topics in News
 Social Trends
 Other signal
http://www.google.com/trends
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10. Ranking Factors for
Real-Time
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11. @JShehata Slide 11

12. Traditional Ranking Factors
 Real-Time search:
 Showing the most relevant up-to-date content for a topic of recently
increased interest.
 They are similar to traditional ranking factors.
 Author Quality + Site Authority/Trust + Relevancy
 Ranking for fresh content: adjust ranking algorithms
 For most newly-discovered content, many traditional ranking signals do
not exist or are weak (e.g. anchor text)
 Google RealTime Includes “Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google buzz,
YouTube, TwitPic … “
 Twitter tweets FriendFeed updates
 Google News links Jaiku updates
 Google Blog Search links Google Buzz posts
 MySpace updates TwitArmy updates
 Freshly updated web pages Identi.ca updates
 Newly created web pages Facebook fan page updates
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13. Traditional Ranking Signals: New Ranking Signals:
• Domain authority • user authority
• Blogging freshness • microblogging freshness
• Number of Inbound Links • number of followers
• Quality of links • Quality of followers
• Inbound links vs. outbound links • ratio of followers in contrast to the
number of people followed
• Linking to bad : good neighborhoods • URL Real-Time Resolution
• # of people retweeting what you said
in the last minute, hour, day …
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14. Reputation & Popularity
 It is not about HOW MANY followers you have, but by how
REPUTABLE those followers are.
 having followers with authority theoretically helps your tweets rank higher in
Google real-time search.
 "You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you,
and then you follow someone--then even though this [new person] does not
have lots of followers, his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are
themselves followed widely” Amit Singhal
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15. Influence / Impact
 Influence is the likelihood that a Twitter user will either A) retweet something
the user has written or B) reference the user.
» The number of followers a user has
» The number of unique references and citations of the user in Twitter
» The frequency at which the user is uniquely retweeted
» The frequency at which the user is uniquely retweeting other people
» The relative frequency at which the user posts updates
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16. @Google vs. @Bing
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17. @JShehata Slide 17

18. Other Possible factors
 Recent Activity : Google pays more attention to accounts with more activity?
 User name: keywords in your user name might also help.
 Age: since age plays a big role in Google search engine ranking, it’s possible
that more established Twitter accounts will outrank the newer ones.
 External links: links to your @account from (reputable) non-social media sites
should boost reputation as far as Google is concerned.
 Tweet Quantity: the more you tweet, the better chance you’ve got to be seen in
Google real-time search results.
 Ratios of followed vs follow: a close ratio between the two can raise a red flag.
 Lists: it might also matter in how many lists you appear.
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19. So, Now What?
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20.  Check the firehose
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21.  Target Influential Users http://www.pulseofthetweeters.com/
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22.  Get Your Fans/Customers to Share
Your Brand on Social Services
» Tip: Limit Sharing options
» Make it Easy for your readers to
share your links, tweets and status
updates.
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23.  Encourage retweets
 tweeting content of 120 characters or less so you can save room for the RT @
Username that is added when someone passes along your message to their
followers.
 (tip) Don’t update multiple accounts, reTweet instead
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24. @JShehata Slide 24

25. It is not about tweets, it is about Retweeted Links
First Mention
254 Mentions
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26. Number of Mentions
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27.  Produce Content that Appeals to Social-Savvy Audiences
 Employ Content that encourages New Users To Engage Socially
 Connect your social profiles
 Attract reputable, topically-related followers
 Monitor & Track Hot Trends/Buzz
 The first 42 characters of the Tweet determines the title tag in Google, so be
sure to select these characters carefully.
 Write keyword-rich tweets whenever possible, without sounding spammy
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28. How to identify Hot Trends?
 Google Hot Trends
 Google Insights
 Bing xRank
 Surchur
 Crowdeye
 oneriot
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29. Google Insights
 Plan for seasonal keyword trends
 Editorial calendar for your SEO Planned Events/News
» Madness NCAA Tournament
» State of the Union
» Tax Season
» Black Friday
» Tiger Woods Apology Press Conference
» Health care debate
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30. Google Insights
 Movie Reviews
Saturday
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31. Google Hot Trends
http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends
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32. Google News
 In The News
 Google News Suggest
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33. How do Online Users Search for News?
Entities
 People (Susan Boyle, Adam
Lambert, Michael Jackson, ..)
 Places (Iraq, Iran, North Korea, ..)
 Events/Shows (Jon and Kate,
WWE, NASCAR, World Cup, Euro
2008, ..)
 Hot Subjects & Crisis (Swine Flu,
Inauguration, San Diego Fires,
Virginia Tech, ..)
 Organizations (CIA, Federal
Reserve, US Supreme Court,
Writers Guild of America)
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34. Avoid Looking Spammy
 Do not create content with multiple buzzing terms
 Do not abuse shortening services for spam links
 Do not go overboard using Twitter #hashtags – Search Engines will eliminate
your tweet from search if you use too many because it “looks bad”
 Spammy looking tweet streams will be eliminated from search
 Don’t use same IP address for different twitter accounts
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35. Tracking Traffic
 Google
» http://www.google.com/url?q=http://bit.ly/aEo5DC&sa=X&ei=_OANTPjPFsLpnQf
o_JyiDQ&ved=0CIwBELAHMAQ&usg=AFQjCNFragMhVyoIrVLoZ_a4DmoyTPN
XBw
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36. John Shehata
 Director of SEO & Social Media
 Advance Internet
 jshehata@advance.net
Follow Me
 @JShehata
 John-Shehata.com
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