Will Google Caffeine Help Business Product Vendors?
Interview with Wheelhouse Founder and CEO Greg Baszucki
Google recently released the newest version of its search index, code named Google Caffeine, with search results estimated to be twice as fast and even more relevant than ever before. Google Caffeine delivers search results from updated websites within seconds, where before it was every 30 days (when Google first started) and more recently, every night. It’s speculated that Google pushed the release to keep up with the way the Web is speeding up in general; users of social media and self-publishing sites like Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, and PubSubHubbub, are now publishing content (and in some cases, their every thought) in real time and throughout the day. The question for business products vendors is – what does this mean for my business? We spoke with Wheelhouse founder and CEO Greg Baszucki about his opinions on this subject.
Wheelhouse Editor (WH): We’ve been hearing about the “hyper velocity” of Google Caffeine, which is delivering search results with real time website site updates and posts. How do you think will affect vendors who are selling business products?
Baszucki: Google Caffeine will have the strongest impact on news stories and timely, temporal content such as news, movie reviews, and concert show times. In general, this is different from the kind of information that business product vendors want to get indexed by search engines. Product information is not updated nearly as often as news stories or other similar content, so Google Caffeine’s ability to display real time website updates in search results is less relevant for business product vendors.
WH: So, you don’t think business product vendors need to run and update their keywords or other SEO content on their sites in order to maintain their page rankings on Google?
Baszucki: As I understand it, the underpinnings of how Google Caffeine crawls, indexes, and ranks Web pages will work in the same way they did before, only now the crawled content will be presented in search results much more quickly.
A business product site that has a successful SEO and SEM strategy should not suffer as a result of Google’s updated search engine. Vendors still need to focus on having content on their sites that is absolutely relevant to what they’re selling in order to get great results from SEO. Even if you’re advertising on other shopping portals or buying advice sites, you still need to have your own website. However, your website it just one point of light for business product buyers. It’s important, but it will only get you a sliver of the shopping traffic on the Internet.
To reach the broad spectrum of business buyers who are shopping online, you should partner with quality shopping and buying advice sites that can give the reach across the Web that you need in order to fully maximize your opportunities. These partner sites should have a strong SEO track record and a strong lead generation track record.
In addition, embracing some of the social media standards of the day, such as positive user reviews and video content, is important. Issuing regular press releases online and on your website, publishing white papers online and on your own site, and making sure your website is updated with any new product information (what I was referring to earlier as “relevant” content), is essential and it will increase the odds that your business gets good listings with the top search engines - both Google Caffeine and Bing, which is now powering Yahoo! search.