This document summarizes John Shehata's presentation on how Google values freshness in search rankings. It discusses how Google prioritizes recently updated and real-time content through tools like Google News, Google Trends, and in its main search results. It also outlines social media factors that can influence freshness rankings, like the authority and influence of a user's followers, timely engagement through shares/retweets, and monitoring hot trends. The presentation provides recommendations for SEOs to produce fresh, engaging content and leverage social media to gain visibility in Google's real-time search results.

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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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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