Business locations have unwittingly joined a world of local social gaming. The use of “check-in” technologies, and buzz around this new kind of social activity has blossomed thanks to the recent growth of sites like Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, MyTown and Brightkite. These are just some of the technologies out there that create social utility and a bit of fun around the everyday places we visit.

Through GPS functionality, mobile browsers and apps have empowered consumers to share their daily adventures, longitude by latitude, tweet by tweet, at any given second in time.  For example, Foursquare allows its users to quickly find a location, check in and supply content that is relevant to their geographic location.  For places of business, a user may want to inform his or her social community in real time of his or her location and thoughts about the spot.  This might include a traditional status update, advice or a review of the location itself.

The above example shows how a new venue is entered, resulting in a new Foursquare address (screen shot below).  Once created, users of the Foursquare community can now check-in, create dialog, and battle for “geographic domination” at this location or business.

Foursquare creates a pursuit for its users who can earn status levels and recognition at certain locations by checking in frequently.

For businesses, there are SEO implications from all this location-based socialness.

As Web sites such as foursquare.com facilitate user-generate content, they also enable natural search visibility via Google.  This realization is an important factor in their ability to grow user profiles, content, and popularity.  Once a location is created by these sites, they are indexed by the engines and become searchable.

• Foursquare Google Index Count – About 300,000 of their “venue” pages are now indexed
• Loopt Google Index Count – About 22,000 of their “places” pages are now being indexed
• Gowalla Google Index Count – About 8,000 of their “spot” pages are now being indexed of

Getting indexed by Google is clearly valuable, as these types of local content pages can rank for geographic related searches. For example, a Google search for “360i Atlanta” results in a Foursquare venue URL ranked in position 3.  On the resulting Foursquare page, users will find some basic info about 360i such as the business address and phone number, plus other user-generated Content (UGC) like shouts, tips and more, which all contribute to the page’s keyword relevance.

Foursquare isn’t the only mobile application contributing to local search relevance. Yelp.com embraced SEO best practices years ago, improving their organic visibility in Google’s results for local search queries aligned with businesses.  The site now offers a mobile “check in” system a la Foursquare.

A big mystery in the mobile/ local page saga is Google itself.  They have not allowed their own “Google Places” pages to become indexed in their web catalog. At the moment, they disallow /places/ URLs via robots.txt.  So Google’s Place pages are not currently indexed, although there are SEO-friendly Google Place URLs available that could be indexed in the future. [Example of Google Place page: http://maps.google.com/places/us/folly-beach/center-street/39/-woodys-pizza.]

A Google Place page for Woody’s Pizza

With Google’s renewed focus on mobile, will they eventually create a mobile app that allows their Gmail users or other community members to do “check-ins” at local businesses? Don’t be surprised if this happens.  They could certainly integrate UGC into their own Google Places along with our Google Profiles (example below). This is speculative, but certainly possible as Google looks to expand its user profiles reach, with social and local relevance.

Regardless of what happens next or who becomes the next Geographic Twittering platform, below are some local social SEO tips that marketers should consider:

*Check out these sites, notably Foursquare and Google Places to review your “venue” pages:

• Ensure each of your business locations is accurate.
• Do you have duplicate listings under various platforms?
• Claim or verify your listings whenever possible on each platform.
• Listen to your customers and learn whenever possible – is there buzz happening about you right now from a customer in your store?

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*Consider adding outbound links from your own location pages to your presence on Foursquare and Yelp!

• If you have enough, create an index sitemap.

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*Learn more about Foursquare for Business and sign up or ponder customer loyalty concepts.
This space is changing fast!  Google’s Buzz and layering onto of local maps is just another recent example of how this environment between mobile, social and location buzz is evolving. Understanding the major players and technologies today will help marketers test and learn until things shake out.

Research showed that multi-channel retailers are increasing their U.S. paid search initiatives despite economic uncertainty, with spend up 7 percent in Q4 ahead of Black Friday. Each of the Big Three engines showed year-over-year spend increases from retailers, but Bing’s 47 percent boost represented the greatest gain. This was likely due to higher average order values (“AOV”) from shoppers converting on Microsoft’s engine.

Here are some of SearchIgnite’s key findings:

• Strong U.S. Retail Spend in First Half of Q4: U.S. search spend from existing retail marketers is up 7% YoY in the first half of Q4 across all major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and Bing).
• Conversion Rates on the Rise: In the first half of Q4, conversion rates were up 17%, a strong increase over this time last year and a hopeful sign that consumer confidence is on the rise.
• Retailers Increase Spend on Bing: U.S. retail marketers dramatically increased their search spend on Bing, up 47% YoY, seeing higher AOV from shoppers on Microsoft’s engine.

The full report is available for download at http://www.searchignite.com/about_research.aspx.

Today, we issued a white paper revealing key trends shaping search marketing strategy and introducing PageShare, a new metric for quantifying the success of a brand’s presence on the search engines. As part of this report, a brand SEO audit calculating approximate PageShare was performed for each of the Top 100 Advertisers in the United States.

Key findings from the report:

What is PageShare?
PageShare is a weighted value assigned to a marketer’s presence for a set of keyword terms in the search engines. It is calculated by analyzing the number of text listings occupied by a marketer across the first three search engine results pages (SERPs) for a respective keyword or keyword set and then assigning a weight to each of the marketer’s listings based on their rank.

PageShare helps transform search engine rankings into a straightforward “shelf space” metric so that marketers know their share of visibility for a given term or set of terms. It is a critical component to any marketer’s digital strategy and overall presence in the search engines.

To read more about PageShare and see how the Top 100 Advertisers stack up, download the complete report here.

One way to effectively mix SEO and PPC: Stay ahead of the curve and utilize new innovations that enable you to weave micro-formats and RSS feeds into search listings.

In an iMedia Connection article published today, Mike Dobbs — Group Director, SEO at 360i — outlines 10 tips for combining SEO & paid search in your digital marketing programs. We’ve provided a brief summary below, but you can read the full article over on iMedia’s Web site.

While search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search are often seen as independent processes by digital marketers, the consumer sees a search results page as a single experience, and research shows that paid and natural search do impact eachother. Here’s a look at 10 key force-multipliers that leverage search results pages to maximize the impact of both your PPC and SEO efforts:

1. Follow proven SEO best practices
There are many standard best practices, but avoiding duplicate content is a vital SEO rule for retailers. Duplicate content is a term used in the field of search engine optimization to describe content that appears on more than one webpage. Embracing the “canonical tag” is an elegant solution for avoiding duplicate content.

2. Evaluate your paid search campaign structure against your own site architecture
Following your site’s architecture when setting up your campaigns and ad groups can help reveal untapped opportunities for your paid search efforts. Do you have an ad group for each of your product categories and promotions? Walk through your site map and compare it against your PPC campaign to make sure you cover all the bases.

3. Take a holistic approach to PPC bidding and ad creative
Running paid ads that include timely promotions and a call-to-action alongside natural search results for your brand can actually increase overall click-through rates (CTRs) on natural search listings, providing higher ROI across your search efforts.

Results of a SearchIgnite study showed that natural search clicks were 17 percent higher on days when paid search ads were running, garnering more “free” clicks simply by running paid search ads alongside natural search results. In addition, total conversions and revenue on both paid and natural terms dramatically increased on days when paid search ads were running.

4. Optimize landing pages
Landing page optimization should be status quo for most sophisticated search marketers. For retailers, advanced optimization efforts can propel a search campaign from good to great.

5. Develop a content diversification strategy
Universal search results — i.e., non-text listings such as images, videos, and maps — are growing in prominence across all of the engines as consumers seek out diverse types of content on the engines. As such, brands should incorporate content-building into their SEO strategies and seek to diversify their content types as much as possible.

6. Think locally
Get mapped if you have a brick and mortar presence. This helps capture consumer interest when looking for physical locations and can aid in drive-to-store efforts. Make sure you have a local landing page strategy that includes a unique landing page for each location and a specific URL with details and content that is unique per location.

For a more holistic and complete search strategy, leverage and incorporate these detail pages into your paid, natural, and feed initiatives as well.

7. Know your seasonality
Learn from last season’s data and identify what worked — and what didn’t — from past years’ efforts. Have an evergreen SEO strategy to gain relevance year round.

8. Analyze your analytics
Improving search performance largely hinges on the level of data you have and your ability to understand and act on it. Spend quality time with your analytic tools. Evaluate your current level of quality control, as well as your existing segmentation of paid, natural, and other marketing programs.  It’s easy to just ignore the moving parts, but fine tuning your attribution strategy will provide more accurate data for critical business decisions.

9. Know the competition’s strategy
The best defense is a good offense, and this is especially true in search as competition for top natural links increases across the engines. Create a process to monitor the search programs of your competitors, including their messaging, positioning, and price listings in ad creative to see how you measure up. Keep an eye on potential threats by assessing how your competitors differ in both natural and paid, especially by product category.

10. Be an early adopter
Becoming an earlier adopter of coding techniques for structured data delivery can separate you from the competition. Leverage emerging solutions like rich snippets or “SearchMonkey” bring more value to the search results listing and could improve quality CTR.

The search landscape is evolving quickly as the major search engines continue to innovate. This creates both new challenges and new opportunities for marketers. Whether it’s fundamental tried-and-true best practices, getting your hands dirty in the data, or trying something new, search opportunities for retailers are plentiful. All of the strategies discussed here can help add some needed horsepower to your holiday campaigns and prepare you for the fast-approaching 2010.

360i COO John Ragals wrote a column for Ad Age’s Digital Next blog today that outlines the key marketer implications of the Y!SSP cancellation. For those marketers that don’t use Y!SSP, not much changes. Yet the many marketers that do use this service, especially retailers and other e-commerce providers, may need to fine tune or even rethink their Yahoo search strategy. Here’s why:

• The way marketers using Y!SSP optimize for natural search on Yahoo is fundamentally changing. Formerly, marketers using Y!SSP could rely solely on the information sent in their data feeds to be well-optimized on Yahoo. Now, these marketers must look more closely at how they are optimized for Yahoo and ensure that they are incorporating the same data that was previously in their Y!SSP feeds in order to maintain their ranks and timely messaging.
• Marketers will lose out on the benefits of the Y!SSP program. These include: 1) Faster refresh rates as compared to the standard SLURP web crawler, and 2) Greater control over natural search optimization.

By canceling its Search Submit Pro program, Yahoo has removed one of its core differentiators. Given this, it’s surprising to see an abrupt end to a program of tremendous value to marketers without an explanation for any viable alternative. The program is a very strong complement to a marketer’s media mix, maintaining historically low CPC rates (as compared paid search CPCs) and healthy ROI.

With the program going away, many questions arise. A marketer’s first priority should be to get as much out of the program in the short term as possible, while at the same time working on ways to reallocate this budget for brands and their full-year 2010 plans. Additionally, marketers should assess their natural search strength in Yahoo’s SLURP to see if additional optimization may be necessary to maintain their ranks, at least before the Yahoo results pages switch over to Bing.

You can read our complete column on the Ad Age Digital Next blog.

In this week’s MediaPost column, David Berkowitz can run – but he can’t hide – from social media in Los Angeles (image via Flickr).

I swore this would be a vacation. It was so weird taking a cab to JFK and not asking for a receipt, but I was ready to embrace it. Still, a long Labor Day weekend in Los Angeles for a friend’s wedding wound up being shaped continually by social media experiences with brands big and small. Here are some standouts.

Virgin America: There are two reasons I flew Virgin for the first time to get to LA. One was that the groom noted there were good deals on flights from New York. Yet uncharacteristically of me, when I checked that the fare was reasonable, I didn’t look elsewhere — I booked it right away. The buzz surrounding the brand has been a big influence, especially with the countless exposures I’ve had through social media such as the repeated mentions on Rohit Bhargava’s blog. I don’t quite get all the hype, but I’d fly it again if the deal warrants it.

Kogi: We landed at LAX at 8 p.m., got our rental car at 8:30, and by 9 had arrived at where one of the Kogi trucks cooking fresh Korean barbecue was scheduled to arrive, according to their Twitter status update. We were among the first on line, and we still waited an hour and a quarter for the grub, even walking with the line around the block when the truck had to change parking spots. Its fans on Twitter, and it diehard fan base of California hipsters, know what they’re talking about. We got far more food than we needed and devoured it all on the trunk of our rented Ford Mustang in a liquor store parking lot. It was the best meal of our trip.

Coolhaus: When arriving at the hotel, the groom heard our predilection for Twitter-promoted food and told us to check out Coolhaus ice cream sandwiches, which had some architectural inspiration. It turns out a furniture store was sponsoring free Coolhaus giveaways, again as per Twitter, and we managed to make it over.

Sprinkles Cupcakes: There was little doubt that having frequented the Sprinkles in Dallas, I had to visit the birthplace of these baked goods in Beverly Hills. The original’s just as good, with slight menu variations such as offering Coca-Cola with cane sugar, instead of Dr Pepper in Texas.

This West Coast visit came with a social twist though. Sprinkles routinely posts Facebook and Twitter status updates with secret passwords that a number of customers can whisper in the stores to get free treats. On Saturday, for instance, Sprinkles tweeted, “It’s football season! The first 50 people to whisper ‘touchdown’ at each #Sprinkles today receive a free football vanilla #cupcake!” When we got to the front of the line, my wife couldn’t keep herself to a whisper and shouted “Touchdown!” as if Tony Romo of her home-team Cowboys had just completed a pass that sent them to the Super Bowl.

Granted, we would have gone to Sprinkles anyway, so they didn’t gain a new customer. That kind of math would be shortsighted, though. Sprinkles has turned me into such a fan that they trained me to check Twitter before going into a store, deepening their number of touch-points with me and strengthening the consumer-brand relationship. Furthermore, they created a much more buzzworthy experience — instead of just saying I bought cupcakes, I can say my wife shouted for them, and they gave her one for free. Through social media, even more people get involved — the “touchdown” comment has 170 comments and 70 “likes.” The total cost of the promotion? $162.50 in free cupcakes that day at retail prices, minus their margins, plus a few minutes of someone’s time, which may have just been shifted from doing something else — like writing a press release.

Millennium Biltmore: This was the official hotel for wedding guests close to the event venue. But as a rule my wife won’t stay somewhere unless it has at least a pretty good TripAdvisor rating, so that means I check TripAdvisor before we go anywhere. Other consumers’ reviews, and the nature of them (do they write like seasoned travelers or first-timers?), will make or break our decision. To Millennium’s credit, they regularly respond to any negative reviews.

Chichen Itza and Water Grill: Zagat reviews influenced my wife’s interest in both of these restaurants, the former a Yucatanian quick-service restaurant in South LA and the latter an upscale seafood restaurant by our hotel in New Downtown. The heart of Zagat Survey’s business is curating user-generated content; it had a business model around social media before the phrase “social media” was coined.

There were many other brands we engaged with on the trip that were not social media-related. The cult around In-N-Out Burger led to my wife’s first and my second visit there. And speaking of religion, we had to check out the Church of Scientology when we drove by the headquarters; we only caught the first five minutes of their four-hour video in their screening room (catch it all on the DVD for $20). Then there’s one of the world’s largest unofficial religions, the worshippers at the Texas Longhorn altar, who without fail routinely comment on my beloved burnt orange University of Texas shirt that I wear wherever I go. All of these are social brands, even if I can’t trace my connection with them to a Twitter update or blog post. Brands that understand the role they play in social contexts, though, can more effectively use social media to spread the word, amplify the buzz, and bring in more customers in the process.

This article was originally published in MediaPost’s Social Media Insider.

Now that Google’s sandbox beta engine has stabilized – it was previously too volatile to run comprehensive and accurate testing – we’ve evaluated rankings for a sample set of 40 retail keywords. We looked at ten major retail brand names (keywords), ten retail head terms (single keywords), ten retail torso terms (two-word phrases) and ten retail long-tail phrases (four-word phrases) and compared the search results on the first three pages of both engines (standard Google and “Caffeinated” Google).

40 Retail Keywords Used in the Analysis

Six things stood out to us as notable differences that could impact marketers when Google makes the switch.

1. Domains and rankings will fluctuate.

How much would a shift from Google in its present state to Google Caffeine affect search rankings for your keywords? Our prediction: substantially. Our exercise shows that rankings would definitely experience a shake-up.

In comparing Google now (Decaf) to the future (Beta Caffeine) against our sample keyword set, we found a significant percentage change for domains across various positions (see chart below).

While 40 retail keywords do not comprise a huge sample size, this exercise shows first page rankings (1-10) shift about 15 percent in Caffeine. Looking at only the head and torso keywords, these one and two-word phrases saw up to a 50 percent difference in the domains appearing within results 1-10*.

* Percentage Gained/Dropped represents the percentage of domains that ranked in Decaf and no longer appeared in results on Caffeine for these positions.

2. The index size, or “competition,” of single keyword search relevance will increase.

Your domain will compete against a larger pool of web catalog pages indexed for single word brand or head terms. It appears that Google will index more pages on the Web, so the potential “results pool” will be greater and thus more competitive for those trying to get to the top of the page. This adds value for searchers because it will ideally increase the accuracy of results.

3. You’ll see a boost in relevance for long-tail searches.

In contrast to the increased number of pages being indexed for single word brand and head terms, the index size for multi-keyword phrase searches in Caffeine appears to yield less competition via Google’s Web catalog / Index. Therefore, if Google were to get a “Caffeine” jolt, your pages would likely compete against a smaller pool of pages for more exacting searches. This might be the key to Google’s logic when it comes to improving accuracy. This could also give larger brands an advantage for their product and deep level pages, which could potentially see a boost in relevance for long-tail searches.

4. You’ll get results (SERPs) in half the time, on average.

While it would be hard to notice with the naked eye, the new engine appears to generate SERPs in half the time. This would improve usability and user experience on Google. After all, searchers want accuracy– but they also don’t like waiting around.

5. Blended results will increase.

Expect the average number of Universal listings to increase slightly within the first three pages of results. This includes blended instances of video, news, images, books, blogs and local search results. Google’s Caffeine will have a greater consideration for Google’s other vertical databases, or those outside its standard web catalog.

Text/Web Listings VS Percentage of other Universal Listing Types:

Vs.

6. There will be a social jolt.

Overall, Google Caffeine would have more social media listings compared to Google Decaf due to a lift in YouTube listings.

Looking at the differences more closely, Caffeine currently appears to be indexing less “Communication” sites (i.e. blogs, message boards and review sites) and “Collaboration” sites (such as Wikis and directories). However, it is indexing more “Multimedia” sites such as video/music/photo sharing sites and “lifecasting” social sites such as Facebook for the keywords we tested.

Vs.

Categories defined:

• Communication: Blogs, microblogs, social networking, “answer” sites, message boards, etc.
• Collaboration: Wikis, Directories, Office Apps, Social Bookmarks, and generally any site designed for document publishing and revision
• Entertainment: Virtual worlds, online games, and generally any site designed for an entertainment experience
• Multimedia: Video sharing, photo sharing, lifecasting, music and audio sharing sites, etc.

*****

What does all of this mean for marketers?
Marketers will need to keep a close eye on their own set of keywords and determine how results change if a switch-over does takes place. Since this is not an algorithm update, altering your best practices or natural search tactics drastically is not recommended. However, if your keywords shift in rank, you will need to refresh your strategy and focus in on any results drop-offs, or take advantage of subsequent wins.

We reviewed a relatively small sample set of keywords for this test and Caffeine is still in beta, so it is possible that the differences outlined here could change before the launch of Google’s updated engine. Nonetheless, it’s clear that with Caffeine, Google is trying to improve the search experience with faster, more relevant results from a wider swath of the Web’s content. This is good news for everyone – Google, consumers and marketers.

-Martha Mukangara, SEO Analyst at 360i, contributed to this report.

Google’s new dashboard for local businesses gives marketers key insights into how customers are finding them via search (Image via Google).

The Google Local Business Center, which allows businesses to create free listings within Google Maps, has recently added a new detailed analytics dashboard. The Local Business Center has long provided business owners with the ability to list their store locations for inclusion in Google Maps, as well as in its main search results for relevant queries. This data comes directly from the marketer and thus provides more authentic and verifiable location information than what’s received through Google’s relationships with data providers and its Web crawling.

The new Local Business Center reporting interface empowers businesses with detailed analytics about how customers are finding their business via search, where they are coming from and how they are interacting with their listings.

In addition to showing impressions and clicks, which the LBC has provided in the past, the new dashboard shows:

• Number of actions, or how many times users showed interest in the listing
• Number of clicks for “More Information” on Maps
• Number of clicks for “Driving Directions,” and which zip codes they came from
• Number of clicks to a business’ Web site
• Top search queries, which can enlighten marketers as to which search terms result in impressions of the their Web site

One key drawback to the new interface is that larger brands – which may have hundreds, if not thousands, of locations under a single domain – will not be able to view analytics in aggregate. The current system will only allow a marketer to view data on individual locations, and does not currently provide a larger feature to show how all (or even regional) locations are performing. This capability, along with a tool to make data easier to export, would make the interface even more powerful.

As more marketers recognize the value of their online presence and its powerful influence on offline conversions, the need for this data becomes even more important. Now, if Google can just find a way to track offline conversions (Coupons? Point of purchase data collection?), they will have truly have helped bridge the gap.

- Danny Young, Associate Director, SEO

Today, Google announced a change to its trademark policy in the U.S., effective June 15^th.

What’s the Change?

While it has always been possible to buy keyword terms that are trademarked by other companies, the use of those terms in ad creative has been restricted. Google is relaxing this policy and allowing advertisers who have a “relationship” with the trademark holder to utilize the trademark terms in their ad creative.

A “relationship” could be an explicit partnership, although simply providing products for resale or maintaining a Web site that is descriptive of the product constitutes a relationship. Advertisers who do not fall into one of those categories – specifically, a brand’s competitors – will still be restricted from including those trademark terms in ad copy.

What Does it Mean for Marketers?

For marketers, there are clear pros and cons as a result of this change. This is great news for companies like travel aggregators and multi-product retail stores (i.e. department stores). These companies will benefit from the opportunity to run creative that is more competitive and compelling to searchers because it can reference specific products.

Conversely, for brands who distribute their products through multiple channels and sell direct via the Web (i.e. Sony), their brand term ads will now be less likely to stand out from the pack. Their distributors may even be rewarded with higher quality scores and lower CPCs on their brand terms as a result of including them in ad creative.

Although it’s in the interest of distributors to honor the wishes of their partners by not including certain trademark terms in creative if they have been asked to refrain from doing so, it will become more difficult for trademark owners to exert control over how and where their brand terms are used. EBay, for example, could lay claim to being a reseller of almost any product, and would not be subject to the influence of those trademark owners. While Google clearly stands to gain economically from this change, there is some merit to their argument that increasing ad choice benefits consumers.

Our Recommendations

We recommend that marketers analyze the impact this new policy may have to their campaign and develop an attack plan to either defend or capitalize on these new rules through an ever evolving set of search marketing best practices.

If you are an aggregator or reseller, you should take a look at your current keyword list. If you are not already bidding on relevant brand or product terms, you should look at expanding your keyword list to include these terms and update your ad creative accordingly – provided that your partner or supplier (i.e. the brand’s trademark owner) does not object. This will allow you to take full advantage of the expanded opportunities that this new policy provides and should likely increase the response to your search ads since consumers are often more likely to click on ads that include real brand or product names.

However, if you own these brands/trademarks, you should have a discussion with your marketing and legal team to discuss what rules, if any, you want to put in place and communicate them accordingly to your distributors and partners. There is no one right answer to whether or not a brand should allow their partners to utilize their brand terms.

Some marketers will want to restrict their partners from using their brand terms in order to protect these marks, to control their CPCs and to ensure that their own search ads stand out from the pack. However, others will be more comfortable with the benefits of allowing partners to use their terms and promote their products in search ads. In this case, these brands will want to monitor their CPCs closely to see what, if any impact, this new policy has on their search marketing costs.

You can find more coverage of the policy change in today’s New York Times and Ad Age.

- Laura Mete Frizzell, VP of Media Services

Google recently launched a suite of new search options. Googlers will now see a new “Show Options” link after completing a search query. At the moment, it’s a fairly subtle gateway into their additional tools, providing searchers with a way to further segment relevance off an original search keyword.

The options available break down into two types – 1) options that help searchers segment and further filter results to find what they’re looking for and 2) options that help searchers visualize the keyword results in different ways.

A look into some of these new options:

Results by Format (Filter): All results can be filtered by type, including videos, forums and reviews. Basically, this new option categorizes links based on formats or types that are already blended into the search results via Google’s Universal search algorithm.

Results by Date/Time (Filter): Search results can now be filtered based on when the links were published. This feature, which Google formerly only showed on “News” searches, can now be applied to all types of search results.

Timeline (View): Results can be viewed in a timeline format so that the volume of results can be seen and tracked over long periods.

Wonder Wheel (View): This feature shows the search keyword in a center bubble with related searches branching off around it. The related searches can also be clicked on to view that term’s related searches – and so on and so on. For users, these new options can make finding what they’re looking for that much easier. The time and date-based features are also an effort by Google to capitalize on the growing hunger for real-time search data, similar to what Twitter has allowed with the integration of their search toolbar.

For marketers, the impact remains to be seen and much of the potential SEO impact really depends on how readily searchers begin to adopt these additional search views and filters when they conduct their queries.

Search engines like Ask.com have provided “more options” in the past, yet users have historically ignored such links and tools. Will Google’s subtle inclusion of these options be embraced or ignored? Will they make the sidebar options more default in the future, similar to the sidebar featured on Twitter (which displays a search bar and popular subjects being discussed at that moment)? Only time will tell. For now, at the very least, the new options are fun to play around with and do provide additional utility for more advanced searchers.

For Webmasters

Google also announced that they will now allow “ Rich Snippets,” to appear in natural search links. These snippets allow for additional structured data points (in required formats) to be placed into a Web site’s coding. These snippets will then be shown on the natural search listing for that page. This means natural search listings can now go beyond the traditional Title/Description/URL format, and opens the gates for marketers to get creative by supplying structured data attributes – such as price, views and ratings – to be included in their links. This in turn could improve eyeball views and click-through rates.

In the example below, this restaurant has added their review rating and price range to their listing.

Code used to enhance the above natural listing:

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Google’s latest news about these enhanced features for searchers and Webmasters, while certainly not earth-shattering for marketers right now, does indicate a willingness by Google to open up their format and become more flexible in their approach to helping the world organize – and find – what it’s looking for.

You can view Google’s video tour below for more information.