Presentation slides from the 2014 Apartment Internet Marketing Conference keynote given by Search Engine Land's Founding Editor, Danny Sullivan.

1. IS GOOGLE A GOOD NEIGHBOR?
Danny Sullivan, Founding Editor,
MarketingLand.com & SearchEngineLand.com

2. In This Talk…
• Google: The biggest house on the block
• What’s up with all that construction:
Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird?
• Is Google trying to price you out of the
neighborhood?
• What is the impact of mobile?
• What’s up with wearables & search?
@dannysullivan

3. Google: The Neighbor You Can’t Ignore
@dannysullivan

4. Google & The Search Habit
• Google is not only way people find
apartments, but it is:
• a primary search habit for any type of
search
• unlikely to be unseated by any
challenger
• So, what is Google up to lately and what’s
in store for the future?
@dannysullivan

5. Of Panda, Penguin & Hummingbirds
• Is Google out to get people with all
these animal actions?
• what are these animal actions?
• The goal is really to improve search
results because ultimately, Google
works for searchers, not publishers
@dannysullivan

6. Behind The Construction….
@dannysullivan

7. Panda: Targeting “Thin” Content
• Launched Feb. 2011,
designed to keep
low-quality or “thin”
content from ranking
• Roughly every month,
Google filters everything
though Panda to trap new stuff & free others
• If goal was to just help Google, it hurt top
Google partners like Demand Media
• Conspiracy threat: LOW
@dannysullivan

8. Penguin: Targeting Link Spam
• Launched April 2012,
meant to fight spam -
especially bad links
• Every 6 months or so,
Google filters everything
though Penguin to find
spam regular systems miss
• Did Google really benefit? For any questionable
sites that lost ranks, others rose up
• Conspiracy threat: LOW
• Crazy link rule annoyance factor: HIGH
@dannysullivan

9. Link Rule Insanity
• Paid links have long been warned against…
• But it’s more complicated as native
advertising & native ads have grown
• Widgets get popular, so Google warns
against them
• Infographics get popular, so Google warns
against them
• Guest posting gets popular, so Google
warns against “blogging for links”
@dannysullivan

10. Link Rule Insanity
• Feels safer now not to link to anyone or to
“nofollow” everything
• Feels insane Google punishes for bad links
rather than simply discounts credit
@dannysullivan

11. Hummingbird: The New Engine
In Google’s Search Engine
• Announced in Sept. 2013,
an entire rebuild of
Google’s search engine
• Panda & Penguin are
parts of that engine
• New engine can better
tap into “signals” or “fuel” to rank results
• A major change is improved support for
“entities” and “entity search”
@dannysullivan

12. Entities & Entity Search
• People, Places & Things
@dannysullivan

13. Entities & Entity Search
@dannysullivan
EXAMPLE:
• A search for “obama” in the past would look
for those letters in that order
• With entity search, Obama is understood as a
person that can be connected to other people
and various facts….
• Google (& Bing) are learning to search not just
for matching patterns of letters

15. Optimizing For Entity Search
• Make use of local “structured markup”
meta data
• Mainly location now but more may come
@dannysullivan

16. Establish Authority via Authorship
• Use rel=“author” markup on blog posts
• Use authorship on pages with real authors;
don’t fake it for listings
@dannysullivan

17. Google+ Local
• Use Google+ for your business
• Big impact on personalized results; you
rank better if “friends” with people
• Yes, Google+ might go away or change but
local listings will still remain crucial…
@dannysullivan

22. Real Conspiracy: Ads, Ads, Ads!
@dannysullivan

23. Then Again, Bing’s In On It Too
@dannysullivan

24. Fear The Knowledge Graph Carousel?
• What’s happening with hotels may be the
future for apartments….
@dannysullivan

27. Paid Inclusion
• Hotel Finder is free,
based largely on
Google+ Local but
with ad integration
• Future could be
like Google Shopping,
pay-to-play
@dannysullivan

29. Moving On To Mobile…
• Everyone’s talking about a “mobile first”
world
• You don’t need a mobile site to rank better,
but…
• A site with problems for smartphone
searches on Google may not rank as well
• More important: knowing how to react in
“Always On” mobile search world…
@dannysullivan

31. Can You Handle The Calls?
@dannysullivan

32. Soft Landing For Mobile Visitors?
@dannysullivan
• Click-to-call?
• Mobile-friendly version of site?
• App for repeat visitors?

33. The Wearable Search
• Notifications on
your phone
• On your wrist
• And even in your eyes…
@dannysullivan

37. Where Wearables May Go
• People may not flock
to Glass but nearly
1/2 like idea of
smartwatches
• “Agents” like
Google Now &
Cortana getting
smarter at
predictive search
• Location “gating” likely key in future
@dannysullivan

38. Takeaways
• Google will keep working to reward “brands” -
big or small
• Google needs brands - make yourself essential
• Expect the “free” space to diminish; Pay to Play
• Structured data may offer new & perhaps
better targeted prospects
• Deliver content that a mobile audience wants
• Wearables illustrate that search isn’t just
keywords in a box on Google; it’s any method
people seek information
@dannysullivan

39. Links & Resources
http://searchengineland.com http://marketingland.com
Articles & Links:
• How To Tell Search Engines What “Entities” Are On Your Web Pages
• Search Engine Land’s Guide to Schema & Markup
• Google: Structured Data Guide For Organizations
• 5 Tips To Kill The Competition In Local Search
• Study: 61 Percent Of Mobile Callers Ready To Convert
• The Future Of Advertising In Your Eyes Today: Google Glass & Field Trip
• Survey: Nearly Half Of Americans Interested In Wearable Tech
download this deck: http://selnd.com/aim2014