Google Flaunts Seo Power Fight Back With Bing and Yelp

August 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Google keeps coming up with new ideas on search. What was once white hat is now black hat. They think they are just to big to fail. But I must admit they have helped my law practice immensley. However, there are even more changes on the way and many even believe page 1 for businesses will only be Google plus business pages and paid adds. Of course the FTC may have something to say about that. There is another change allegedly on the way that will only allow one entry per business on page 1.

What is clear is that Google wants you to buy adwords or deal with their resellers. So where does that leave you if you want to focus your efforts on organic search. Google is still and in the forseeable future going to drive the vast majority of search. But how about the newly announced triad of Bing, Facebook,  and Yelp.

Bing has already partnered with Facebook. If you look at a Bing search page it is in three parts. The far left is organic search. The middle are paid adds and now more and the far right is facebook querries. The idea being you can ask you facebook friends for advice on choosing the best personal injury lawyer or other businesses.

The center column is something Microsoft is calling Snapshot. There, Bing offers information and services related to specific searches, giving users the ability to take actions directly from search results. So if search results include restaurants, for example, the Snapshot column might include reviews as well as the ability to reserve a table at a specific spot.But the column that Microsoft most believes will win over new users is the one on the right that features Facebook friends. Microsoft engineers have created technology to index data from Facebook and then map it to individual user’s search queries. It only works when users are signed into Facebook.
                         
However the new partner Yelp is now going to power Bing’s local search.  The recent press release from Yelp stated:Yelp will surface content including, review snippets, photos, business attributes, and more, to Bing users in the U.S. This content will be featured prominently on relevant Bing Local pages, presenting information to help consumers do more with businesses near them.”  There’s that review word again.
Yelp also has their own filter. But reviews caught in the filter still can be accessed . And there are ways to get them out of the filter.I believe the big push with Yelp is not only local search but mobile search. Couple the mobile search capacity of the Apple devices, Bing (Microsoft) has the beginnings of a formidable force. Certainly Google’s use of Zagat for reviews and many of its changes including Plus are reactions to the triad force of Bing,  Yelp and Facebook, with Apple lurking. (Currently the default search engine for the I phone , but that may change.
  • Yelp had an average of approximately 71 million monthly unique visitors in Q1 2012
  • 6.3 million unique visitors used a Yelp mobile app
  • Every second a consumer looks up or calls a business from a Yelp mobile app (Q42011)
  • A photo was uploaded every 30 seconds from a Yelp mobile app
  • Yelpers have written over 27 million local reviews.

Plus, Apple has joined forces with Yelp on its new maps application along with providing more content to Siri.

So get over to Yelp and make sure you have claimed your business listing.  But be prepared to get your reviews through their filter. I had a client do a review at my office on a laptop and within 48 hours the review was in limbo. It did not show up, but they told you it was caught in their filter and you could still see it if you knew where to look.

So there is a lot  to keep up with even if you pay an SEO expert for help. But in this day and age you need to know some rudimentary things so you continue to shine in the search results. There is no reason not to if you are a serious and experienced personal injury attorney, providing great service to your clients and great content on the internet. So stay tuned to the Circle of Legal Trust.

by Anthony Castelli Attorney 8170 Corporate Park Drive, Cincinnati, Ohio 45242

513-621-2345  www.castellilaw.com

PS Did I say Content is still King

 

 

 

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