As you can see, the data for “Yellow Pages” and “Print Directories” is conglomerate.  Looking specifically at print YP usage, search has a 2% advantage over the course of the year and almost 20% in the past month alone.  When the data is broken down by age things get more interesting:

All demographic groups seemingly ignore internet yellow pages, search engines are the preferred channel for ages 18-54 and even the 55-64 group is at a statistical parity between search and print yellow pages (+1% YP).  At 15% penetration in the 65+ group it should be noted that even seniors can no longer be ignored on the Web. 

Small businesses, listen up – you can’t say that your customers aren’t online any more.  With 78% of Americans on the Web (Internet World Stats), and the majority using the search engines to research and contact local businesses you can’t afford to:

 a) Not have a company website
 b) Have one that doesn’t show up in local search

Remember, even if you have a diehard core customer base and even if business is currently healthy you are being shopped, you are being researched, you are being evaluated locally and your potential customers are looking for what you do not just your name. 

Go ahead and Google your products and/or services for your city, then check 5-10 of your surrounding cities and towns (assuming you aren’t marketing nationally).  Now let’s do a quick ROI calculation for this exercise – How many yellow pages ads would you need to cover 11 markets (your primary location and 10 secondary/supporting markets)?  At what cost?  $400/mo, $500/mo… each?  Perhaps more?

Based on our own customer’s research, they’re seeing website-generated local leads exceeding YP leads by 80% (case study coming soon).  Every market is different but the evidence is clear, what used to work in the yellow pages is less effective than what works online. Move that spend (or a proportionate percentage of that spend) into local search engine optimization – It’s clear your customers are looking, can they find you?

In a blog post on June 8, Google announced, “Our new search index: Caffeine”

And as Google works to improve their search engine, on a day-to-day basis, they have introduced new ways to speed up the process of searching. With the completion of Google Caffeine, they have improved the functionality, and speed of search engine results and indexing.

The Basics of Google Caffeine

• 50% fresher results for Web searches, better and faster content retrieval, quicker updates…
• A search index capable of retrieving results in parallel; able to process hundreds and thousands of pages in a matter of seconds…
• With parallel processing, Google Caffeine is able to index and retrieve Web pages on an enormous scale.
• Temporal relevancy determines newer, fresher and more updated content. Think of temporal relevancy like breaking news; when something important happens, it needs to be quickly found online.

If you are wondering, or a bit confused, as to what we are talking about, do not worry–Google has a video on how search and caffeine work. When you search Google, for say the keyword “cute puppy” you are in fact retrieving Google’s cache of its search index; you are not retrieving a real time result, but a copy of Google’s cache of that Web page.

“We’ve moved from a batched indexing system to an incremental system that enables us to more quickly and efficiently refresh pages.” – Google spokesperson Jake Hubert

When you search for any keyword, Google’s API will query its massive index for all matching terms, and then it will display the results. You may ask, “How did Google collect the index?” Well, Google employs the use of bots that crawl the Web continuously; they download new or existing pages, cache them, and then update the index. Bots work by crawling the links on a page–that is how they got their name.

The effort to maintain and keep this index up-to-date is a massive one. Google datacenters are the heart of operations, with super clusters of servers that network their entire infrastructure and indices together. Therefore, when you search for the keyword “cute puppy” all of their technology comes together in unison to bring you the results.

Google realizes that search engine users want the freshest content they can find. With the older indexing system, results came up relatively fast, but as more content was added to the Web, the pace of new information would have been troublesome to maintain.

“In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second.” – Carrie Grimes, Software Engineer at Google

The Scale of Google Caffeine

Google processes Web pages at astronomical speeds and lengths:

• One index can take up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage.
• Google adds new information to the index at an alarming and rapid rate; hundreds and thousands of gigabytes per day.

Estimated size of Google’s index – Image courtesy of http://www.worldwidewebsize.com

However, with Google Caffeine, and possible future speed improvements, the company is able to keep up with an ever-increasing amount of Web content–social media for example has been one large data mine. Google does not index certain elements of many social media websites, for privacy reasons. And some social media websites do employ the “content=noindex” or “rel=nofollow” HTML tags. Noindex tells Google’s bots to ignore the index, i.e. not to cache the Web page. Nofollow tells the bots not to assign any importance on the link, i.e. Page Rank/authority; it makes a link transparent.

What Google has also done is index certain public elements of social media, for example, the public profile section of your Facebook account–if you set it to public. They have also employed real time results via social media services like Twitter. If you want to see real time results in action, search for anything that is popular in the news, say “congress.” Then click the “latest” link on the left side. You should get a Twitter feed in the results.

Essentially, Google fully realizes the need to scale their search engine with the growth of information online.

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We also have expert Web design and development that is focused on small business. View our Small Business Suite for an overview–it offers everything that a small business needs to succeed online. ]]> http://www.cirrusabs.com/blog/all-about-google-caffeine/feed/ 0 http://www.cirrusabs.com/blog/the-google-life/ http://www.cirrusabs.com/blog/the-google-life/#comments Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:16:58 +0000 Rick Kemery http://www.cirrusabs.com/blog/?p=596

Life at Google, living with the Internet giant and the Engineer question.

In a recent blog post called “Working at Google–the first 6 months” by Don Dodge, a developer advocate for Google, he explains what it is like working for the Internet giant. He says that the working environment feels like a startup still, with everything moving at a fast pace, and things changing at a moment’s notice.

He compares the now ten-year-old Google to Microsoft. Saying that in 1985, when Microsoft was just ten years old, the similarities were striking. Microsoft DOS was enormously successful, and the company was just starting to branch out in other areas. Comparatively, Google had initial success with search and now are branching out into other areas of technology, such as Gmail, Google Apps, Android, etc.

He then goes on to focus on what it is like to work for Google, or (in our words) to live the “Google Life.”

Related story: TIME Magazine photo essay, “Life in the Googleplex”

He starts by saying that the atmosphere at Google is confident. Success, optimism, dedication, hard work and winning are the key values. He compares working for Google to playing for the New England Patriots and winning Super Bowls.

Nevertheless, one statement seemed to evoke a response from Chris Matyszczyk at the CNET Blog Network, in a blog post called “Is Google far too much in love with engineering?” The response from Chris M. references what Dodge said on his blog post about how Google goes about employing workers and management. Dodge relates to the fact that almost everyone at the company has an engineering background–from upper management, to entry level.

He quantifies this by saying that engineers bring valuable qualities to the core values of the company. From questions, assumptions, data and decisions, he says that engineers are some of the best fits for Google. Overall, he says that what the company does is data, and engineers are great at gathering and assimilating it. Essentially, they offer a systematic approach to data versus a
disorganized one.

In response, Chris M. argues that Google may go a bit too far with its use of engineer’s. One statement made by Dodge seemed to evoke further questioning, “Educational achievement is valued at Google.” Chris M. retorts, “Do complex interview questions really test your educational achievement?”

My answer? Complex interview questions are great rules for baseline assumptions, but connecting the two with educational achievement is farfetched. Sure, a complex interview process with related questions is a great way to find highly proficient candidates. However, Chris M. is partially right in assuming that Google may love engineer’s a bit too much.

It seems as though Google has taken the appeal of engineering to near astronomical levels, by stipulating that marketing, sales, development and management areas of the company include employees with a background in engineering.

“My troubled educational achievement suggests to me that Dodge is holding up this intellectual monochrome of leadership as a good thing. He is suggesting that this is a company that is so immersed in engineering that only those who understand its complex rudiments can be trusted to, say, market Google’s products.” – Chris Matyszczyk, writer, CNET Blog Network

Essentially, Chris M. argues that Dodge’s statement reflect somewhat of a “presumptuous” attitude–one held at the esteem of Google itself. I will partially agree on this point. Most of us will agree that Google does data. Search is all about data. We also might agree that engineers are valuable for the technical side of things like search engines, databases, information technology, and of course engineering.

But, hold the presses, please. Engineers for marketing? Engineers for sales? For writing, even? Is Google creating Willy Wonka and the Engineering Factory? We might understand the need for engineering at many levels at Google, because of their focus on it. However, it is my assumption that there are more kinds of people who can understand the products and processes of Google, besides just engineers.

At the end of the day, Google puts value in engineering on all levels. And wearing many different hats is not exactly a new idea in business of today. Can successful and proven marketers do a better job at marketing than one with a background in engineering? Can writers with a college degree in English and experience at writing be more proficient than those with no related degree or experience? I hope so.

But from Google’s viewpoint, engineers are valuable to all aspects of their business. They are effectively saying that to understand their technology for whatever sphere of business–that an engineering background is the best fit. Is that wrong? Not at all. Is it a bit misguided? Perhaps. Is it successful? Most certainly.

Let us take it to the comments, to see how people reacted to the blog post of Chris Matyszczyk:

Spitbucket said,

“Engineers can make a robust software functionality but it takes a good designer and usability expert for the product to appeal to the masses. Majority of the googlers are left-brainer, I think google should start hiring some right-brainer people to put some human aspect on their product.”

EvaSei said,

“You know what I really don’t mind the fact that every person at google has a background in engineering, it has proved time and time again to produce excellent product.”

Ecotopian said,

“This is why Apple will beat Google. Engineers don’t get what ordinary people want in a computer interface. I hate software that looks and feels like it was designed by engineers. Apple are the Human Interface experts, and also have a top team of engineers. But they don’t let the engineers lead.”

Gfonsecaz said,

“I think you are also assuming that all engineers are completely left-brain people without any creative skills. That’s a completely false idea. You need to be quite creative to come up with engineering solutions. Sure, as an engineer you have to make unbiased decisions based on data but that doesn’t mean by any stretch that engineers do not use their imaginative side in many ways. Maybe you should have interacted with more engineers before writing this column.”

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