In today’s age of social media, search engine optimisation & search engine marketing, there is a misconception that anyone can do it.

If you know how to edit some meta tags, insert alt tags in images and stuff your content full of relevant keywords you can carry out SEO on your website.

If you create a group for your company on Facebook and get 50 members, you are a Social Media expert.

If you can setup your own PPC account in Google AdWords and broadcast your ads to the nation, then you earn the title of Search Engine Marketing Manager.

The truth is that this is all a misconception. Because there is so much information floating around about SEM, SEO, PPC and the like, both bad and good it is difficult for anyone to know if they are really doing a good job or not. I can say for a fact that a lot of people are doing a bad job, and Google is not helping in this area because all they are thinking about is their revenue stream.

99% of Google’s revenue comes from Google AdWords. Without this revenue stream Google wouldn’t exist as it does today.

As a specialist in this field it upsets and frustrates me that Google project the misconception to it’s AdWords advertisers that anyone can open and successfully run their own account. Of course, it is possible to open and start a new account quite easily, just as it is possible to do SEO on your website with a few META tag adjustments and keyword placements… not.

With basic help on how to run your own AdWords campaign, Google makes it look easy for the average person to run a successful campaign.

When you think about it, Google is the next Microsoft. Microsoft make it easy for anyone to open a new spreadsheet, word document or powerpoint presentation. While this is great, it doesn’t mean that you are an expert in any of these programs, it just means that you can spend a lot of money on a program in which you are going to use maybe 5% of it’s total features.

This applies equally to Google AdWords. AdWords is a fantastic platform and offers advanced analytics and adjustments to the ads run on this platform. The average user will use 5% of AdWords capabilities. A specialist in the field will use 90%+, giving their client maximum Return On Investment (ROI) and maximum benefit through Google AdWords.

Just because you can open and appear to run your own account in Google AdWords, doesn’t mean that you are not flushing your money down the toilet in overpriced keyword bids and under-optimised account setup. The basic user will lose out big time with their 5% knowledge and 95% ad spend. Don’t be fooled into thinking your are an expert just because you know the basics.

Remember that AdWords amateurs spend 95% of their money as they only use 5% of the programs features. Professionals use 95% of AdWords features, while spending only 5% of their money.

From a webmasters perspective this can be a very useful tool in determining the reading level of your own content. You will want to and perhaps expect to have a more basic level for social sites where user/member interaction with the website is encouraged (except perhaps in niche situations).

Take for example Hiking Hong Kong, which reviews hiking trails in Hong Kong for the average outdoor enthusiast. As the webmaster for this site, I would expect to see a basic reading level for a good portion of the website, with some intermediate content for some of the more technical articles. When performing a site search in Google we can see exactly what Google thinks of our content:

Google Reading Level Site Search

Thankfully this is exactly the result that we get in return. As for our website Semtek on the other hand I would expect to see more of an intermediate reading level as we attempt to ‘dumb down’ some of the more technical SEM information so that our clients can actually understand what we are talking about.

Google Site Search Intermediate Reading Level

Which again is exactly what we can see. This information can also be very useful in determining where Google places you against your competitors.

A specific search on “search engine optimisation”, being a technical subject will more than likely return higher reading level results at a higher position in search engine results listings. This would be true for other specific technical subjects.

Doing a search on “search engine optimisation” (or any other subject) in Google will also show reading levels of websites for that query as well as the reading level below each result returned.

Google Search Website Reading Levels

On this specific query, it is not until page two that we see some basic reading level websites appearing in the search results. It must be noted however, that Google being Google, will still return results that it thinks are the most relevant to users overall – that is taking into account many other features of a website to determine it’s relevance in search engine results listings.

As with SEO, there is not one solution to get you ranked in first position on Google, there are literally hundreds that when added together, create that one solution. In this example however we see that Google is becoming more open with the ranking techniques, something which will surely follow in the other top search engines as time passes if they want to have any chance at competing with Google.

That has finally changed back to (and better) the way that it used to be. Now, if any domain shows significant value over other websites, up to four different URL’s will be displayed along with an option to display even more results so that users may get to the exact page that they want in one click.

For example, lets take hiking in Hong Kong. If we search for the term, “Discovery Bay hiking”, we are given three highly relevant results from the website Hiking Hong Kong, with the option to display further results.

Hiking Hong Kong relevant result listings.

Showing more results from this domain, results in another 5 relevant results being displayed, with a further option to show all results from the domain, should you agree with Google’s observation that this domain is the most relevant against all other domains.

Show more results for Hiking Hong Kong.

I have personally felt that the two URL listing was inadequate as it limited relevant results from being displayed for specific queries. If one website, such as Hiking Hong Kong in this example can display up to eight relevant results with the option of displaying all results, then surely this is more user friendly and gets visitors to where they want to be, quicker.

So providing that you can make your domain appear to be (or actually be) the most relevant amongst your competitors, then you have a really good chance at dominating the organic search results and taking in the most referrals from any one relevant search query.

Google Fast Flip lets you browse news articles and the like as if you are browsing through a newspaper. This visual representation makes it quick and easy to look over different articles, without actually having to check out each one until you find what you really want.

It adds a new dimension to search that is very welcome.

Yahoo have lost 15%, MSN have lost 21% and Ask has also lost 21% over last year.

Searchers are also now using longer search queries when searching for what they want on the web. What does this mean? This means that the average searcher now knows (better) how to use a search engine to find the results that he/she is searching for.

Longer search queries are becoming more popular as year over year increases (and decreases) show just that.

• 1 word search queries have dropped by 3%
• 2 word search queries have dropped by 5%
• 3 word search queries have remained stable
• 4 word search queries have increased by 2%
• 5 word search queries have increased by 6%
• 6 word search queries have increased by 8%
• 7 word search queries have increased by 12%
• 8 word search queries have increased by 22%

This means that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) management have become a lot more difficult as search queries become longer and therefore more varied.

Paid advertising using keyword targeting will become more difficult as accounts become larger due to increased keyword numbers. As keyword phrases become more targeted, so too must paid advertising campaigns such as Google AdWords, in order to maximise quality score, reduce Cost Per Click (CPC), and thereby increase Return On Investment (ROI).

Basically, Google Wave is an email client with messenger capabilities and an added photo sharing with blog update-ability. Now Wave is of course mobile friendly and as a result I can see it doing away with the need to use both Twitter and Facebook. I welcome Wave with open arms if I can dump Twitter, Facebook, Messenger and other less important programs in favour of Google Wave.

It has been 2.5 months since my last post about Google Wave, so I can only image that it must be right around the corner. Over the past 2.5 months a selection of people (10,000) have been testing a Beta version (officially referred to as the Google Wave Sandbox) of Google Wave to iron out bugs and add new features as these beta people see fit and as Google sees worthy. On September 30th, Google Wave will be rolled out to 100,000 members of the general public in what will most likely be the official Beta Release of Google Wave.

Google Wave may also be doing away with programs such as Microsoft Word and will no doubt incorporate similarities to Excel and powerpoint also. Documents, in the example above, can be edited by multiple parties at any one time, cutting down on editing times drastically as all is done in real time (seemingly from anywhere across the globe).

An instant translator tool and polling abilities just add to the fun. I just cannot wait for the release of Google Wave!

Discover what weather is heading your way:

Find Local Businesses near you or where you are headed:

Need to convert some units?

What’s on at the movies and what are the showtimes?

How’s the game going:

When does your Cousin’s flight arrive?

What’s the definition of … ?

What time is it in … ?

Let’s make some money:

Need to calculate just how much money you’ve made today?

Ready to rumble?

Convert your currency:

Is it at the tip of your tongue?

Need to track your packages?

What area code is that?

What’s the population of … ?

Find housing listings:

With the ability to search back and forth over days or decades and on whichever topic you choose, it has never been easier to find what you were looking for.

Google News Timeline search on Michael Jackson

You have the ability to view your schedule, add or remove sights and change the dates of your intended stay.

Taking a further look into Google City Tours, the first thing I have noticed is that there is no tour information for Hong Kong, or at least I cannot figure out what to search for. I have tried “Hong Kong” and “Hong Kong, China”, but nothing comes up. Upon typing in “Melbourne, Australia”, at once a 3 day itinerary is displayed for sights across the Melbourne city area.

Melbourne Schedule, Google City Tours

Most sights appear to be Museums, something which doesn’t interest me that much. After removing most museums from my schedule, there is not much left for my 3 day proposed schedule.  Now, you may also add items to your schedule, but the problem is that without knowing where to go, it is very difficult to know what to search for.

In this respect, Google City Tours may still have a long way to go to become more functional and hence the reason for it being in the Labs area of Google – Where new programs are tested and developed before becoming main stream.

I can definitely see a good use for Googly City Tours and look forward to using it in the future when it is fully functional.

Google Squared returns a spreadsheet view of results compared with one another for easy ah… comparison. This makes finding what you are looking for much easier. Lets look at some examples.

Let’s say we want to buy a new digital camera. Let’s type digital camera into Google squared: http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=digital+camera

Let’s narrow it down to Olympus Digital Camera: http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=olympus+digital+camera

This returns much more relevant results. With a table showing the item name, an image of the camera, a description, the manufacturer (of course they are all the same for this search), the resolution in Mega Pixels and the colors the are available in. The most interesting thing here is that all these pieces of information are actually sourced from different locations (you can see the domain name as you hover your mouse over each section).

There is also a button marked “Add to this Square” which will add more results to the table, should you decide that the search is highly relevant.

I like the look of the ‘tough’ range so I’ll enter “olympus tough digital camera” to narrow my results. http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=olympus+tough+digital+camera

Great. Now I can see many of the models in the tough range of Olympus digital cameras and I can also see the prices, the condition (if second hand), along with the usual item name, description and image. I’d like to see the Mega Pixel stats so I will add a column. I start typing in meg… and I can select megapixels from the drop down – oh it looks like Google need to do some more work on this feature as no values are returned.

Either way, I can see that I like the look of the Olympus Stylus Tough 6000. By clicking on the description I am taken to that specific product page on the Olympus America website which overall is a good experience for me, however clearly some refinements still need to be made – the reason why Google Squared is still in Beta.