TastyPlacement created six websites in similar-sized cities across the US, and after 10 months of letting the websites sit with no promotion, they used a different social media approach to promote each website for a month: Twitter followers, Tweets and Retweets, Facebook shares and likes, Followers to the business’ Google+ page, and Google+1 votes for the homepage. The sixth website was left with no promotion as a control. At the end of the month, TastyPlacement tracked the change in search engine ranking for each of the websites.

Not surprisingly, the sites that were promoted through Google received the biggest bump in search engine ranking on Google. By gaining 100 Google+ followers, the website ranking moved up an average of 14 points, and 300 Google+1 votes added 9 points to the search engine ranking. Facebook promotion came in second, with 70 shares and 50 likes garnering an increase of 6.9 points. Twitter was the least helpful social media site. Fifty tweets and retweets for the business website only yielded a gain of 2.88 points, and 1000 Twitter followers actually lowered the website’s search engine ranking by 1.

Of course, this experiment was done on a small scale and there are many variables that can affect the results. Also, the search engine rankings are for Google, so if you are looking at other search engines like Yahoo or Bing, these rankings will be different. But the experiment does prove that promotion through social media sites does affect your business, and every company should be mindful of this and use social media to their advantage. For more information about TastyPlacement’s experiment, click here.

As mentioned in previous posts, when you are logged into Google+, you now see not only conventional search results but personalized results as well. You will be able to get results based on items and data that have been shared with you through the Google+ social network. This includes information from Google+ posts and photos, as well as Google Picasa photos. This allows you to get search results that are potentially more relevant to what you are trying to find, and also allows Google to collect more information about you in order to better tailor advertising to you. These personal results are all things that you could have searched for on Google+ before, they are now simply integrated to your regular Google search.

One concern with Google Search Plus Your World is that people will now potentially be searching for even more private results than they previously did. This is the reason why Google decided to encrypt searches made from a secure connection when you are signed into your Google account. By encrypting searches, no one else can see what you are searching for and what sites you click on. Unless, of course, you are an advertiser. While website publishers used to receive referrer data from Google, telling them what searches were made before a customer clicked on their site link, with the new encryption service that was rolled out in October Google ceased to provide this data. Google advertisers, however, still have access to referrer data which has angered a number of publishers who rely on referrer data to ensure they can increase traffic to their sites.

One of the advantages for Google with the new search is that they can more heavily promote Google+. In addition to your new personalized results, Google offers you suggestions when you type in the search box. These suggestions are increasingly biased toward Google+, including Google+ profiles for your friends. This is handy when you are trying to find someone with a common name, since the first result will probably be the person you already have in your contact list. In addition to people you already know, Google+ is promoting other Google+ members, which may lead to your further integration into the Google+ social network. Also, along the right side of the search page, Google now offers you People and Page suggestions from Google+ based on your interests.

These changes are obviously all geared toward promoting Google+ and its social network over, say, Facebook or Twitter. As people become more accustomed to these changes, it will be interesting to see how Google+ will grow and whether other social networking sites will adapt to challenge the search engine. For more information, check out the article at Search Engine Land.

Here’s how the sites work:

• DealsGoRound.com is free to list coupons for sale. When the coupon is sold, the seller has to pay the site a 10 percent cut. Luckily, there’s no fee for buyers.
• LifeSta.com works like DealsGoRound.com but makes sellers pay 99 cents plus 8 percent of the purchase price if a coupon is sold. Again, buyers don’t pay a fee. There are safeguards in place, as the site guarantees refunds if buyers find out within 60 days that the coupon they bought was invalid or was already used.
• CoupRecoup.com works like Craigslist and lets buyers connect directly with sellers. If you like a deal, you are able to contact the seller by filling out a form with an offer price. It’s up to the buyer and seller to arrange the payment and exchange of the coupon.

• Mobile Search Features – including icons for local search: icons for “Restaurants,” “Bars”, etc. This gives individuals the ability to search with a simple click. Additionally, queries users search for frequently will begin to show up as suggestions below. Another function is that maps and results will appear in a split screen, with the maps changing as the user scrolls through different results.
• New interface for Tablet Searches – The Google search interface will be optimized for tablets, with bigger images and easier to click results.
• Google Goggles with Translate – allows users to translate foreign languages as they appear in the real world. For example, if a user takes a picture of a sign in Chinese, a mobile can translate it into the English language.
• Voice Search via Desktop – Users who browse via Chrome can talk to their Google page and ask for things like “pictures of monkeys” or “recipe for jambalaya.”
• Image Search on Desktop – Chrome users have the ability to drag an image into the search box and figure out information from that image. For example, if there is a flower in the picture, you can figure out what the flower is, where it grows, etc.
• Google Instant – gives users results as they are typing the query and these results will change as the user continues to enter the query.
• Instant Pages – Some pages will have results loading in under a second. A page with the “old” Google taking a few seconds to load (Google reports, the average page takes five seconds to load), will load in less than a second with Instant Pages-enabled on Google.

Website owners can also add the “+1″ button to their website.  This will allow any visitors who enjoy your content to recommend it in Google searches. This could be the next step in SEO.

For more details about the Google +1 button, check out the video here.

If you like this article try clicking the +1 button below.

Akamai, an Internet service provider and traffic monitor reported that at its peak, there were less than 5.4-million page views a minute at about 8:30 a.m. ET on news-focused websites, making the royal wedding the sixth biggest event in the history of the Internet.

The numbers were significantly less than the top event. In the summer of 2010, the World Cup qualifying matches and the longest match ever at Wimbledon happened at the same time and sparked 10.3-million page views a minute. The second, third and fourth spots are occupied with by games. The No. 5 spot is held by the 2010 U.S. mid-term elections, which saw a peak of 5.6-million page views a minute in November 2010. At sixth spot, the royal wedding drove Internet traffic more than other recent major events, such as the night Barack Obama was elected president, as well as coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Even in the most recent news of Osama Bin Laden’s death, there was a major spike in Internet traffic as users flocked to news sites for the latest information. Akamai reports that there were over 4.1 million page views around 11:30 p.m. ET Sunday, around the time President Obama began his remarks. This represents a 28% increase in North America and 24% increase in global web traffic compared to the averages for that time. Surprisingly enough, as news broke, social media sites saw huge surges in activity. Twitter reported over 4,000 tweets per second around the time of Obama’s speech. Even more interesting is the role social media sites play in our awareness and knowledge. It has been reported that over 50% of individuals first heard of Osama’s death through a social media site!

Technology has undoubtedly evolved and plays a huge role in our lives. It is keeping us informed and connected, without boundaries and with little concern of where we are at the time of the event.

Room 77 is a great functional hotel room database and search engine, where travelers can turn to in order to get the run-down on nearly half a million hotel rooms in 18 different cities. Room 77 gives future hotel guests access to a combination of hotel-sourced and people-sourced room information so that travelers can book better rooms. The site and iPhone app returns “Room Cards” matched to user preferences, such as high or low floors, view importance and elevator distance.  When the user selects a hotel, rooms are ranked and the best matching rooms are returned accordingly.

Additionally, users can select an individual room to get more details about the room, see where it’s located in the overall floor plan, look at images sourced from Google, as well as read the Room Card, which gives information regarding the bed type, room square footage, etc.  At a couple hotels, you can click a “Look Inside” button to see photos inside each room.

Currently, they are working on a pilot project called “Room Request Guarantee,” which is like picking your seat on an airline.

Both Google Person Finder and the Red Cross’s Family Links website are being utilized to make the whereabouts and conditions of individuals known. Person Finder sites are created during emergencies and enables individuals to leave information about their whereabouts or information about a missing person. About 158,700 records were set up for Japan. The Red Cross site publishes a list of names with contact information of individuals who want to get the word out they are alive.

It is believed that the most common method for individuals is to post from their social media accounts. Not even an hour after the earthquake, there were 1,200 tweets per minute from Tokyo. It was reported that on March 11th, there were over 4.5 million status updates on Facebook, mentioning “Japan,” “earthquake,” or “tsuanami.”

If you run your own website, you are able to use your pageviews and influence to assist people in Japan, by using a couple lines of code from Hello Bar. It is a small bar, which floats at the top of your site, providing visitors with a brief message, as well as a link. You only have to inset the code snippet once and you are able to easily customize the bar with colors and text. Here you can solicit donations for Japan and you can pick which organization you would like to accept donations for (Doctors Without Borders, Global Giving, The American Red Cross, etc). Your message can be something like “Japan has been hit by a devastating earthquake and tsunami. Click here to help and make a donation.” You can then change the message at a later time or you can switch the bar off so that no message is displayed.