An examination of changes in Google and the significance of not ranking first.

Can losers come first? Sure they can. If you look at the online marketing world in terms of pure winners and losers, the winners are going to be those companies and websites that reach their goals. And since for the large majority of businesses the main objective is to generate revenue, conversions are ultimately the bottom line in measuring site performance.

The commercial measures of social networks

Social networks have been around for a while, and Facebook has been the absolute spearhead in this amazing growth over the past two years. The market, once in infancy, has quickly matured and evolved into an array of individuals, companies and corporations who spend their time Facebooking, Blogging, Twitting, Beboing, MySpacing, creating, commenting, interacting, bashing, selling, buying, annoying, faking, gratifying and generally interacting in what has truly become a world wide web. 

You know, the problem with so many one day internet marketing seminars is a distinct lack of engagement between the audience and the speakers. All the speakers know each other and five percent of the audience do all the speaking on behalf of everyone else, whether they like it or not. It's a bit like going back to school: those that speak and those that don't. Isn't Twitter a bit like that as well?

There have been some recent changes creeping into Google's search results over the last few weeks. We should be used to algorithmic shift on Google by now. Since the Florida update in 2003 and the many filters, penalties and updates since then, things have never really stood still. So what's new?

Since the turn of the year, more and more big brands are appearing in the top 10 results for highly competitive generic search queries, without making any noticeable changes to their SEO or linking strategies.