In a move that is sure to please pro privacy advocates while simultaneously upsetting many marketing managers and SEO consultants, Google has officially killed referred data for users who conduct a search query while logged into a Google service. Anyone not signed in though will continue to send referrer data.

What does this mean to marketers and SEOs? Well for starters, you’ll no longer see the keyword referrals that triggered the organic visit in your analytics, even if you use Google Analytics. While you will still know the visits came from a free or organic search you’ll no longer be able to see the keyword phrase associated with the visit as it won’t be passed along. This of course will make it much more difficult to understand what keywords from organic search are paying the bills.

It’s important to note that this change does not impact paid search (also know as PPC). Google will still pass all of the keyword referrer data regardless of whether the user is behind a secure connection in order to ensure that advertisers are able to track what’s working.

With so much of Google’s revenue driven by paid search, it’s no surprise they’d keep the data flowing for advertisers. Despite the discrepancy, I can’t really blame them. I know I’d be quite upset, if I was told I could no longer see how my ads were performing. While “Trust me” might be okay in traditional media land, it just doesn’t cut it in the online advertising world.

While advertisers will continue to have access to the data, those marketers who have built their businesses purely on SEO will find it more difficult to do so in the future. @MattCutts suggests the change will only affect a small number of users to start (in the single digits) but I imagine the percentage of encrypted searches will likely grow over time as encrypted search becomes more common and eventually the default for all search queries. Good or bad, the days of building a business purely off the back of SEO may be over.

Ultimately, this could mean more advertisers for Google as website owners and markets, especially for new sites will need to run some form of campaign to see exactly what works before investing in SEO. While marketers will still be able to build an optimised website out of the gate, it will become a lot more difficult to prove to the skeptics that SEO is a viable and profitable channel.

As a consumer, I support the move, especially knowing how much information is left behind from our daily activities. But as a marketer I’m left just a little frustrated that I’ll have to start relying a lot more on saying “Trust me, it works.”

For a more a comprehensive piece, see Danny Sullivan’s in-depth analysis at Search Engine Land, with quotes from Google’s @MattCutts and leaders in the privacy field.

What do you think? Do you believe this will kill SEO or just make it more challenging and drive more businesses to work with professionals?

Getting to the top of the rankings in a single country is tough enough. Trying to replicate that same feat in multiple markets can lead to tears. Do you use a single domain name with a directory for each country, like IBM or do you use subdomains? Do you go local and use country specific domain names for each market and host them all from a single data centre or do you make the effort to host each website in the local market and optimise the content and currency for locals? Do you really trust Google to do the right thing and give love to all your content equally regardless of the cross site duplication? Do you believe that a single website with multiple Webmaster Tools’ accounts is enough to specify which content is right for each market? While Apple’s sheer brand strength is enough to allow it to rank well almost anywhere, will the same approach work for your business based out of Australia. And that’s all before you get through the challenges of language and cultural issues.

What’s in it for you?

• The best approach to build and optimise websites across multiple markets
• The pitfalls of blindly following the strategy of a large foreign brand
• To link or not to link your other sites (this is a make or break decision)

Google are continually looking to serve more relevant results as quickly as possible. Leveraging information from people you know, to customise and improve your search engine results.

The new talking point from Google is the launch of the +1 button on search pages. Launched in the US yesterday, it’s only a matter of time before we start to see it on search results in Australia. The new feature allows users to click to recommend your ads, search results and webpage’s.

The purpose of the button is for users to recommend websites which their Google account friends and contacts can view, delivering more customised results based on personal and friend preferences. Over the next few weeks, for English searches on Google.com, the +1 button will be rolled out.

To be able to see the new button, you must be logged into a Google account in order for Google to identify you and your likes, as well as taking into consideration the recommendations of your friends with Google accounts. This will become more powerful as more users sign in or register Google accounts and use them regularly.

Eventually you will be able to add the +1 button to your webpages, similar to a Facebook “Like” button to allow your user to recommend content through their Google account. Thus expanding on their profile and helping Google determine in future the best results based on your profile and recommendations.
See Google’s video for more information:

Jumping quickly on this new feature, a new plugin extension that potentially competes with +1 for Firefox, Safari and Chrome called “+Like”. The extension leverages the Facebook “like” functionality in the Google search results. Google +1 however will be available to all who have a Google account. “+Like” requires a plugin that won’t be a default for users and would need to be voluntarily installed, but with the number of people already logged into Facebook, there could potentially be more traction here.

Will this impact on my SEM ads or SEO results?

At this stage it is hard to tell what impact the +1 Button will have on the search results. The idea of impression traffic decreasing if Google deems a site irrelevant to a particular user is unknown. Google are anticipating that +1 will drive more qualified traffic to the site, which is great for site owners and advertisers who should see an improvement on engagement and quality of visitors.

Keep an eye out for when the +1 button hits a search results page near you.

Overnight, the Wall Street Journal published the grim results of Google’s punishment on Overstock’s attempt to game the system.

The WSJ reported: “Overstock’s pages had recently ranked near the top of results for dozens of common searches, including “vacuum cleaners” and “laptop computers.” But links to Overstock on Tuesday dropped to the fifth or sixth pages of Google results for many of those categories, greatly reducing the chances that a user would click on its links.”

So where did Overstock.com go wrong? Well according to a spokesperson from Overstock, their practice of encouraging college and university websites to link back to Overstock so that all their students could receive a 10% discount, likely put them in penalty box.

A quick search on Opensiteexplorer.com, a tool from SEOmoz for checking a website’s back links clearly shows the high number of educational websites linking to Overstock’s vacuum cleaners page. In addition, a quick glance at the anchor text pointing to the same page shows a high usage of “vacuum,” “vacuums” and “vacuum cleaners” over the more common brand related term such as Overstock.

For someone trained in SEO, seeing a high number of links coming from similar domains and using the same or similar anchor text is often a clear sign of over optimisation. Obviously, Google felt the same way and believed that intervention was needed.

Here’s an example from one of the Universities who took up the offer.

So if you’re not already convinced of Google’s intentions to stomp out excessive linking building after JC Penney’s recent woes, then this latest public lashing of Overstock.com should be a cause of concern, especially if you’ve been using similar tactics.

With the high levels of link buying that we’ve seen here in Australia and abroad I expect to see a few more public outings of other well known brands in the coming weeks. Whether it will help to turn the tide against those who go too far is yet to be seen.

One of the newer innovations from Google is HotPot. Defined as a “location based recommendation engine” for Google Places, HotPot is powered by the user and their friends. HotPot personalises the search results to leverage your reviews of businesses or services and tailor your search results to “match what you like”.

Currently place pages aggregate external review data from sources such as Yelp, Eatability and TrueLocal. HotPot will encourage engagement with rating and reviewing businesses directly from your Google profile with preferences of likes and dislikes being stored and used by the recommendation engine.

HotPot leverages a large database of places. Google’s algorithm takes your ratings and recommends other places similar to the ones you already like. The idea of being able to rate a place on the go has not been neglected.  Integration to rate and review is enabled through Mobile Maps on the Android.

Sharing ratings with your friends personalises the results further displaying to you recommendations of a place or places your friend likes within the search results page.

Has this been done before?

HotPot does not seem to have any check-in functionality which leaves it separate from the likes of Foursquare and Facebook Places. HotPot is focused on the review and ratings side of the coin at this stage, though this is an area they may move into or make partnership with another brand to try and increase participation.

HotPot looks to move along the lines of socialising places like Facebook but with more information which is highly relevant. Interestingly Facebook have been making updates with their Places feature with “Popular Places” linking your friends with places they have visited. So far it is limited to “Likes” with no review or rating functionality.

What should you do?

Similar to Google Places, HotPot uses photo, review and location information from other sites. Businesses will need to look at gaining a strong presence on review sites; business contact details must be prominent on their website.

Ensure your site in particular the infrastructure is optimised, and that your pages are crawlable for Google to include relevant information in their HotPot results.