A few weeks after Google announced that they would be shutting down Google Inbox, Google has announced that Google+ will be shut down in the next few months. This announcement came on the heels of a recently announced data breach that happened on the platform during March of this year.

Launched in 2010, Google+ was the latest attempt in creating a social media platform similar to Facebook. While it may not have been as successful as its competitors, Google+ still has a dedicated following through the communities that have been established. To prepare its users for the shutdown, Google has now created a process that allows users to be able to save and move their Google+ data. We’ll be discussing this process, along with more details about the shutdown of Google’s social media network.

Data Breach

One of the main reasons that Google+ will be shut down can be linked to the data breach that happened on the platform. Over 500,000 accounts had their personal and private information illegally shared without consent by a number of developers. This event happened on March 2018, which was during the same time that Facebook was under intense scrutiny due to the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, and months before GDPR was launched.

The most concerning part about this information was the fact that Google did not disclose the news for a number of months, which left a large number of profiles vulnerable. While Google has stated that none of the data was mishandled, data regulators would still point out that the breach was not informed to the public. This issue will most likely lead to investigations in the US and in Europe, which could definitely mean very busy months ahead for Google.

Small User Base

Another reason for shutting down Google+ is due to the low number of users on the platform. When it launched in 2011, people across the internet were already using Facebook and Twitter as their main social media platforms, both receiving a surge in the number of users. This meant that Google+ already has hefty competition when it comes to attracting users to their platform.

Despite having dedicated communities and users, their number is still eclipsed by other social media platforms. Initial attempts to get more users to include making Google+ as a way to log-in to Google services such as YouTube and Gmail, a feature that was eventually removed. In the past few years, Google+ has become a social media platform that caters to specific niches, becoming an alternative platform that is less crowded but has a more passionate community.

While many social media users across the world wouldn’t bother too much on the shutting down of Google+, the small passionate communities in the soon to be gone platform are now looking for a new social media platform where they can recreate the sense of community.

The Shutdown and Saving of Data

Google+ will be shutting down in 10 months, which means that users would have to export their data out of the platform. To help users do this, Google launched a service called Takeout, which makes exporting data a much smoother and more efficient process. All you have to do is to log-in to your Google Account and begin the process of downloading your data.

You can select which datasets you would want to download, which includes, Google+, Hangouts, and +1s. Once you have selected the data, you can choose the file type and create the archive. This ensures that your data would not be permanently deleted once it shuts down.

Key Takeaway

Launched with so much promise of being a viable competitor to Facebook, Google+ ended up as a social media platform with a declining user base, seemingly left out compared to the rest of Google’s other tools and services. Despite having a dedicated community, it is very unfortunate that Google’s foray into social media ends on a low note, as it could have been able to do so much more with the right support.

With this shutdown, it might take time before Google attempts to create another social media platform, as they are busy with other services, such as Google Project Stream, and developing their AI technology. Google+ remains as another Google project that did not take off and joins a list of services that the company has shut down

If you have questions and inquiries about Social Media or SEO in general, leave a comment below and let’s talk.

The post Google+ Shutting Down: What You Need To Know To Save Your Data appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Just read about Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to the shareholders. It’s intriguing that he calls their corporate culture the ‘Hacker Way’. It clearly shows that companies are not the same as they were before – especially online companies. The culture is different, the way of doing things is different, the mindset is different, the competition is different. It’s a whole now different playing field at a whole new different level.

I think it is an encouragement and at the same time, a vision that we can all absorb. I’m definitely inserting this in my company DNA. And what a coincidence that our company’s name is SEO Hacker (SEO Hacker’s Way? Lol. On second thought…)

Here is a brief summary of what Mark said in his brief letter to the shareholders (I’m re-posting it here… In risk of Google Panda… Kidding.):

Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.

And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.

By focusing on our mission and building great services, we believe we will create the most value for our shareholders and partners over the long term — and this in turn will enable us to keep attracting the best people and building more great services. We don’t wake up in the morning with the primary goal of making money, but we understand that the best way to achieve our mission is to build a strong and valuable company.

This is how we think about our IPO as well. We’re going public for our employees and our investors. We made a commitment to them when we gave them equity that we’d work hard to make it worth a lot and make it liquid, and this IPO is fulfilling our commitment. As we become a public company, we’re making a similar commitment to our new investors and we will work just as hard to fulfill it.

The Hacker Way

As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.

The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.

The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.

Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words “Done is better than perfect” painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.

Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: “Code wins arguments.”

Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.

To encourage this approach, every few months we have a hackathon, where everyone builds prototypes for new ideas they have. At the end, the whole team gets together and looks at everything that has been built. Many of our most successful products came out of hackathons, including Timeline, chat, video, our mobile development framework and some of our most important infrastructure like the HipHop compiler.

To make sure all our engineers share this approach, we require all new engineers — even managers whose primary job will not be to write code — to go through a program called Bootcamp where they learn our codebase, our tools and our approach. There are a lot of folks in the industry who manage engineers and don’t want to code themselves, but the type of hands-on people we’re looking for are willing and able to go through Bootcamp.

The examples above all relate to engineering, but we have distilled these principles into five core values for how we run Facebook:

Focus on Impact

If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems. It sounds simple, but we think most companies do this poorly and waste a lot of time. We expect everyone at Facebook to be good at finding the biggest problems to work on.

Move Fast

Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they’re more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.

Be Bold

Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the bold things they should. However, in a world that’s changing so quickly, you’re guaranteed to fail if you don’t take any risks. We have another saying: “The riskiest thing is to take no risks.” We encourage everyone to make bold decisions, even if that means being wrong some of the time.

Be Open

We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest impact.

Build Social Value

Once again, Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.

Thanks for taking the time to read this letter. We believe that we have an opportunity to have an important impact on the world and build a lasting company in the process. I look forward to building something great together.

I’m not a big fan of Mark Zuckerberg. But after reading these ideas, I must admit that he must be pretty darn good – even outside programming.

The post The Hacker Way appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

As we all well know, Google Plus has now been launched albeit in testing phase. Even so, the search giant has now taken up arms against the social network threat which is Facebook. Now that social signals are a powerful means to enhance your SEO campaigns, the question is, how can Google Plus affect SEO?

Eureka!

We know all too well how Facebook affects search rankings with Facebook shares and Likes integrated into almost every website you land on. Furthermore, Twitter tweets from authoritative Twitter accounts are also measured in a way that is integrated into the search engine ranking factors of Google (and perhaps other search engines too).

Google plus is still pretty new but the way I see it, Google will really try to integrate the social signals they can extract from Google plus into their search engine rankings. Here are some of the reasons why:

It’s easier to measure social signals from Google Plus because they own it.

It’s easier to tweak stuff in Google Plus in order for them to get better social signals to integrate into their ranking factors.

People would be driven to use Google Plus due to the fact that it will have more bearing in search engine social signals factor.

An Experiment

Just recently in Google Plus, Rand Fishkin started an experiment (which I gladly participated in) on trying out Google Plus metrics alone in ranking a website.

We shared the experiment exclusively on Google Plus platform. Then we started clicking the +1 button for this specific website on its search results page using the keywords ‘vintage scooter helmets’

As you can see, the experiment worked.

From a 16th place rank, it’s now in 6th place. Try it out for yourself. Google Plus works powerfully and Google has really given their Plus button a big advantage when it comes to their own ranking factors. It’s phenomenal. It’s crazy. It’s Google – and they now have full control. You either join the Plus one club or you lack one precious ranking factor.

Right now, if you’re an SEO specialist, you would want to have anything and everything you can get your hands on in order for you to rank – and rank well. I highly suggest that you implement Google Plus one button in your website and ask your friends and peers to click on that little bugger whenever they could.

Sharing in Google Plus also seems to have an effect – maybe that’s what Google is going to do next? Or perhaps they are already tracking what you’re sharing inside Google Plus?

In any case, I’m sure getting into Google Plus will never be a mistake.

New posts on Google Plus you might want to check out:

How Google Search Plus Your World Affects SEO

How Google’s Authorship Markup affects SEO

Google Plus Optimization

How Google+ Pages Affects SEO

The post How does Google Plus Affect SEO? appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

It’s pretty obvious that Google + is a threat to Facebook’s ever-growing base of users. The reason behind it is that Google + seems to be pretty much a Google version of a Facebook upgrade.

Well Facebook ain’t letting Google get their way that easy. What does Facebook have that Google doesn’t?

Data

Data of your established Facebook friends, contact numbers, email addresses, etcetera. For Facebook and Google who already have established systems and working business models, data means users – and users means money.

Right now Google ‘owns’ most of the web. They’re the biggest player. And being the biggest player, you want a piece of everyone else’s pie. We all know that Google tried to go social more than once or twice. And failed.

The thing I love about Google is that they are not afraid to fail – even fail big. They still try to win. And this time, it certainly looks like Google is going to make it.

Now that the Google + Project is out for a limited amount of users, it has alarmed Facebook that Google might just eat up some of their share of the social network market. So what did they do?

They blocked the data

There used to be an extension in Google Chrome named ‘Facebook Friend Exporter” that you can use to export your Facebook contact details – Name, Email Address, Phone number, etc…

That extension still exists. But it no longer works – because Facebook blocked it out.

In essence, Facebook blocked YOU out.

But don’t worry because the author of the Facebook Friend Exporter Chome plugin promises a new version with a different design. He says it is currently undergoing deployment but you would have to do exports daily.

So now you can’t get your Facebook data using that extension. All this because they were afraid that their users might want their data, export it and import it to Google so that they could try Google +. It’s a pretty immature thing to do. But that’s that and you can’t really blame Facebook if they’re afraid of Google eating up a piece of the social network pie.

A company that has failed many times has more chances of getting it right the next time around. Facebook has all the reasons to be scared of the Google + Project.

There is a Way

You can still download your Facebook contacts by using the Yahoo Importer. This importer lets you download all your Facebook contacts into Yahoo if you click the Facebook icon. And from there, you can export your Facebook and Yahoo contacts to a CSV file (executable in Mircorsoft Excel) and voila! You’ve got your Facebook contacts with you.

If you’re looking to try Google + someday, you can simply import all your contacts from Yahoo and Facebook into your Google contacts by using that CSV file in Google’s importer. How?

Go to your Gmail account then on the upper left corner just below Mail, click on Contacts. A new left sidebar panel will appear and in it, you will see the Import Contacts option. Click on it and a pop-up will open for you to import any CSV file with your contacts in it.

I highly suggest that you export your Facebook data now before they block out Yahoo Importer too. It’s your data anyway – supposedly. Download it for backup or for future use. Things change and Facebook might not be a ‘Forever’ trend in the web.

For more information on how to further use Google plus, here is a Google plus tutorial outlined for you by Ana Hoffman from Trafficgenerationcafe – just so you know.

The post Facebook Doesn’t Like Google + Project appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Twitter is one of the most used social networking sites around. Measuring your Twitter influence has now been one of the things to look out for especially now that we know that Google is taking Twitter’s social signals into account.

There is actually a website that now enables you to roughly measure your Twitter influence. The metric name is TunkRank – something like Google PageRank but it’s used for Twitter. Interesting.

If you’re the type who likes to get your hands dirty on analytics, you should check this out.

TunkRank has two basic ideas behind their influence metric (taken from Trunkrank.com/about)

1. The amount of attention you can give is spread out among all those you follow. The more you follow, the less attention you can give each one.

2. Your influence depends on the amount of attention your followers can give you.

Your TunkRank score is a reflection of how much attention your followers can both directly give you and how much attention they bring you from their network of followers.

It Ain’t Simple Math

Measuring your Twitter influence is tricky. TunkRank seems to have pulled it off albeit roughly.They’re still in the tweaking stage – especially since Twitter has kept updating their API lately.

TunkRank has a pretty simple way of telling you solidly how influential you are. They have a 1-100 metric, in which case, 100 is the highest (most influential) and 1 is the lowest (least influential). The rate of influence doubles with every 7 points such as how Google’s PageRank score exponentially increases for every 1 point increase.

What’s the algorithm behind TunkRank? Well it’s based on Daniel Tunkelang’s proposed Twitter influence algorithm (taken from The War on Attention Poverty: Measuring Twitter Authority)

So as you can see, it’s not as complicated as Google’s PageRank algorithm because it’s still in its early stages. In fact, I do not completely agree with some of the results that I have found in their TunkRank Tool. I think it still needs some tweaking and re-thinking. But all in all, I like the idea that Twitter influence can now be concretely measured. In fact, I did some measuring for my Twitter account and here’s what I’ve got:

Click the Picture to Enlarge

My SeanPatrickSi Twitter account stats:

Following: 2,182

Followers: 1,983

Tweets: 4,436

Now as you can see in the picture, my TunkRank score is 22 of 100 which, according to its system, puts me in the 92nd percentile of all Twitter users. Does this mean I have an authority of 92%? No. It only means that I have more authority than 92% of all Twitter users – which points out that most Twitter users have crap authority.

My raw score is 10.41 – which I believe is taken from the results if the TunkRank algorithm computation with my stats.

What I like about this tool is that it also highlights the top contributors that I have in my Twitter account as well as the Twitter users with the highest authority/influence who are following my account.

Gaming

The algorithm is too simple and is too public to remain as is. Right now the system can most definitely be gamed – as what we have experienced with the Google PageRank system. Now, if Google and other major search engines such as Yahoo and Bing are using social signals to influence their ranking algorithm, then gaming your Twitter influence can be part of gaming your search engine rankings, is it not?

Is Google using the TunkRank system? I don’t know. But what I do know is that this model can work – it just needs a little more tweaking with how its algorithm would flow. It needs more data input than just followings, followers and tweets and retweets. Just like how Google made their PageRank system complicated. But as of now in its early stages, keeping an eye on your Twitter account’s TunkRank would be a good idea. Who knows? Maybe Google does really use this metric to identify who’s tweet to consider and give more weight to.

Looking at Social Signals

Lately the search engines have been looking at developing their algorithm further into adopting to the latest trends and measurements. Right now the trends are leaning towards social media and how they affect human activity and trust. Social signals are now one of the things that search engines look at when determining ranking – at least for a time being.

Check out why Twitter is one of the best places to be when optimizing your social signals through this post by Jason Acidre.

The post How to Measure your Twitter Influence and Why you Should appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about Facebook starting to develop their own search engine that reaches outside of the Facebook website. Their method: Through likes and shares.

Facebook is now displaying ‘liked’ news content in it’s drop-down search results. They’re also displaying content that are shared by your network of friends with the same keywords as the news you’ve just liked and/or shared.

Friends as a way to measure

If you haven’t already noticed (which I’m pretty sure you have, if you’re a Facebook user) you can already see videos and social media content that are shared by friends. And no I don’t mean just some of your friends, I mean you can see all your friends who have shared the same social media content. Here is a sample screenshot I took:

Noticed how Facebook now points out all your friends who shared a specific link?

It’s not friend X shared LINK with friend Y anymore

It’s friend X and friend Y BOTH shared Link

And it’s a method that Google uses. The more the inbound link, the more relevant a website must be, therefore giving it higher rankings in the SERPs. Now Facebook is trying to use that certain idea to their own engine.

Grasping more of the web

I was quite surprised when I saw Facebook releasing search results that were NOT in their website. This search query that I typed in was a query that retrieved results which pointed out of their website and into mine.


Apparently as much as Google is trying to get into the social networking game, Facebook is trying to play the search game too! Both are trying to get a piece of the pie out of the other’s market niche.

Facebook SEO

What I think is that sooner or later, Facebook just might shed some light on how we can operate SEO on their search engine. If their search engine works better than we now predict it would, it just might be the next big thing.

Right now, Facebook has released information regarding ranking on their search engine. Funny thing is, you have to had visited that website or content already for it to appear in the search results. Beats the purpose doesn’t it?

But just so that you guys know, the formula:

1. Who shared the content first? Priority is given to people in your network

2. Relationship to other people who  also liked it – these may be people outside your immediate network

3. Total number of ‘likes’

According to searchenginewatch, here’s how it works:

(Keyword relevance of shared content within your immediate friend network) divided by (ranked in order of who shared it) x (total number of likes)

Tips for Keeps: Right now, keep a close eye at what Facebook is doing. So far they’re playing their cards well compared to Google. And I think there’s a big, big SEO opportunity if you get to be one of the firsts to get your hands on valuable Facebook SEO information.

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It’s a no-brainer that Facebook will jump in the search game sooner or later. They are slowly redefining the web as we know it. They already have their own set of loyal users (around 120 million of us) who log in every day! And as we all know, all search engines are codes. And SEO practitioners better start giving time studying Facebook’s SEO if they want to be ahead of the game.

30-day timeline

Facebook has included in their search results 30 days worth of your people’s public Status updates, newsfeeds, photos, links, videos and notes. This includes pages of which you’re a fan of and of course, groups and applications. Again, let me emphasize the word ‘public’ because people now have the option to set their privacy controls, you cannot see the data that are from private accounts in the search results.

Regardless of whether or not you are friends or if the person is in your network, as long as the data is public, you will be able to find it using Facebook’s search feature. Ain’t that something? Do you smell SEO around the corner? I’m sure you do! It’ll just be a matter of time ‘til information about their search engine leaks out for SEO specialists out there to mingle with.

There will always be search

Just think, if Facebook would now change half of the web, wouldn’t they be big enough to dictate their own search? And if 120 million people now constantly log in to Facebook everyday, wouldn’t you say that those people might try to search for something there? Something about a talked-about restaurant perhaps? Or the new expansion of a video game?

If there is a lot of data, there will always be search. Facebook is a data giant – with all the ‘like-ing’ going on in the web. I’m pretty sure that Facebook SEO is going to be big soon.

Maybe that’s why Google is trying to build a social network too?

Tips for keeps: Keep an eye out for Facebook’s search function. Try searching for something everyday and see how it goes. You can also follow their blog for the latest updates about Facebook.

The post The start of Facebook SEO appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Facebook a threat to Google?

It’s not a wrestling match

Just recently Facebook has toppled Google as the most visited site in some countries. At long last, a contender has emerged to show that there is something else to do in the internet than just search. There are statistical charts found in Mashable to back up this fact. Facebook is starting to up it’s game and it has shown Google that it’s not a monopoly when it comes to hits.

But if you ask me, even if Facebook gets more hits than Google, when it comes to functionality – there is no competition. Facebook is limited only to it’s database and networks while Google is not. Google embraces the whole web. Question is: Will there come a time that Facebook will be used more than all other websites in the internet combined?

If you ask me, my answer is NO – but that’s just my two cents since I’m not a modern-age internet Nostradamus.

But there may come a time that it could happen because of Facebook’s huge attempt in collecting data for it’s own use through it’s new ‘Like’ button. Facebook is taking the internet’s Web 2.0 capability into a whole new different level.

Competition is inevitable

In fact, Facebook is already a threat to Google when it comes to advertising. Because it arguably receives more hits than any other site in the world today, it is one of the best places to advertise a product, service or idea. And since you can easily set your target market/customers because of the data that Facebook has gathered from them, it’s easily a hard-hitting competitor for Google – which relies on search data for it’s target market.

That’s only one of the already obvious facts on how Facebook is a threat to Google when it comes to internet domination. Even so, if you ask me, search will still be one of the most competitive and dominating activities in the internet in the years to come (say, 10-20 years?) so I’m putting my money on search that’s for sure.

For us SEO practitioners and specialists, all we have to do is ride on Facebook and Google in whatever way we can. Since as an SEO, our primary and foundational task is internet marketing, we have to use whatever means possible to market our product, idea or service with the ‘big guns’ of the internet. So even if Facebook topples Google, we needn’t worry – remember, the best Social Network Marketers and Analysts are SEO’s too!

Tips for Keeps: Ride the waves – study up on the new SEO practices in Google and Facebook whether it’s black-hat or white-hat. Then flux it out to a mix that you can use for your clients/ business.

The post Facebook topples Google as internet’s most visited site appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

I agree that Facebook is doing a mighty well job in connecting the web and making it more personalized for most people but then maybe this step is a bit too hasty for them. Sure, you have the option to keep your stuff private, but then Facebook has, by default, already checked the ‘instant personalization’ box for you. Meaning the moment you land into one of their “trusted partners” sites, your personal information has just been given away.

For some people, that’s a good thing. But then when most Facebook users are asked if they were for it or against it, we hear a resounding ‘no’. Gee, maybe because that’s why we call it ‘personal data’

For you to be able to turn off this ‘instant personalization’ feature, you have to do two things:

1. Go to Privacy Settings which is under the Profile link then Applications and Websites and un-check the box at the bottom to remove Instant Personalization
2. Click on the links to Yelp, Pandora and Docs.om on Facebook and click on “Block Application”

As such, some people are left quite disappointed with Facebook in their decision to personalize the web in this way. But hey, we won’t know for certain if this will benefit us in the long run or not. For me as an SEO specialist, my job is just to keep an eye on how to use social media and social networks to give my clients the best targeted traffic around wherever, whenever.

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