Why I think Google is in trouble
I've been thinking a lot lately about how Twitter and Facebook are replacing Google search.
Not talking about Twitter's search. Just talking about the use of Twitter & Facebook in general and how they replace your Google activity.
I think that Google makes a lot of money when you are looking to buy something. You do a search in Google to find out what is recommended, where/how to travel, what things cost, etc. Advertisers pay Google a lot of money to get on the page where you do your research.
But now I see my wife and friends asking their networks these questions. My wife was looking for baby bottles. 2 years ago she would have inquired via Google about what to buy. This time she asked her friends and got better results (though maybe not as fast).
We trust our friends, even above Consumer Reports. That's the way it works in the real world and I think it will be like that online, too.
So I think that Twitter and Facebook are going to put a dent in Google's future revenue, if they haven't already.
Also, I think this especially true for local purchase decisions. (In my mind) Google's future earnings were dependent on getting local businesses to buy Adwords. I think that we'll hit up our friends for local purchase recommendations.
So.... I'm long Twitter, Facebook and "social network bots".
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SEO with Multiple domains to one site
I recently bought Tortola.net. I now have 3 Tortola domains that point to the same website: TortolaTourist.com, VisitTortola.com and Tortola.net.
All three domains go to the exact same site. But Google can't see that they are all the same exact hosting account - if I'm not careful (and I haven't been), Google will see these as three separate sites and then ding all three as a link farm type operation.
On top of that, BuyDomains.com used Tortola.net as one of those crap Google Adsense sites with no content. So there's a lot of crap in Google's cache for the domain.
Now that I've got the whole thing setup, I've learned a few things. Here's what you should do if you ever have a similar domain issue:
1. Got a lot of time? I'd probably recommend that you remove the domain from Google's search. Tortola.net has a lot of crap in Google's cache. It'll eventually clean out, but in the meantime it'll probably wreak havoc on my overall Google rankings. (I may be wrong on this suggestion.)
2. Setup the new domain as the main domain on the hosting account. Eventually all the other domain names are going to just "point" to the main domain. For me, I've got Tortola.net as the main domain, and the rest point to it.
3. Change the site to reflect the new domain. Page titles, meta tags, description etc so it refers to the new domain rather than the old one.
4. Setup the new domain in Google webmaster. From what I've learned you don't want to delete the old domain's webmaster listing.
5. Create a sitemap for the new domain and add it to Google Webmaster. This should help the old cache get removed and the new domain's links get discovered faster by Google.
6. Here's the last, important step. You want to make all the "other" domains do a 301 permanent redirect to the main domain. For me this is difficult because the domains are all located in separate hosting accounts (long story). But it is a very important step, according to Google.
Google needs to know that these domains are not separate websites and this is (supposedly) the way you tell Google. Also, your previous rankings with the old domain should be maintained.
I think that's it. Did I miss anything?
I missed this: You want to have the main domain (in this case Tortola.net) as the "primary" domain in your hosting. It shouldn't be an "alias" to another domain on the site. So before you do anything, make sure to setup the new domain as the primary and then ALL other domains are 301redirected.
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Twitterbots
Pete Prodehl (@raster, rasterweb.net) helped me launch three Twitter bot websites recently: MKEfood.net, BookTweets.net and WineTweets.com
I got Pete to create the three twitterbots in the Fall of 2008. Basically anyone can follow the twitter account, then send it an "@reply" message and that message will bounce out to all the followers. Winetweets took off - the other two have sorta languished.
From the beginning I thought about the way to store, save and filter the @reply messages on website outside of Twitter. Twitter has a great search but even that search doesn't help you filter through a bunch of messages on a specific topic. Also, we all follow so many people and there are so many new people every day that the signal to noise ratio is getting worse and worse. That's where these kind of services come in handy.
We save all the messages and make them very searchable. You can type any words at the end of /search/ and filter through the messages for specific things. The best example is for "delicious" wines on Winetweets.com or Fun on BookTweets.
Some of the inspiration has come from Stocktwits. These guys are way ahead of people in creating a new way to search, find and discuss stocks & finance news. What they've done is very impressive and the stocktwits site has a great streaming "people ticker" that I enjoy watching just flow by. Eventually there will be a stocktwits for every subject.
Coming updates:
We're going to add a link out to Google (on mkefood), Amazon.com (on booktweets) and WineLibrary.com (on winetweets) for any word or phrase that is put within "quotes". We're also going to display any photos that are added to twitter via Twitpic. And I hope to have a simple search form (although right now you can do it yourself by adding words at the end of the search url).
Where is this going?
I'm not quitting my day job to work on these.
It's more about learning from doing. I am very intrigued by Twitter and its group publishing abilities. Twitter is the "ultimate user generated content" system. We all can cooperate and coordinate to publish a site together using Twitter. The only setback is that there are many "lurkers", people that read but don't participate. That needs to help.
I would like to make a community news Twitterbot service out of mkenews or/and milwaukeenews. I think it would be really amazing to have people regularly submit news that they see: fires, bar fights, high school sports scores, etc.
I have been thinking about a travel twitter bot assistant to help you plan a trip.
Also, I'm interested in Facebook's new friend connect. It would be great to open these bots up to Facebook and get Facebook-only people to participate, too.
