The whole video is worth a watch, but if you want to skip to the clip that shows the live video integration forward to the four minute mark.

With all the video cameras monitoring intersections, parking lots and buildings it makes you wonder what the future of mapping will be like. Will we be ‘walking’ through real-time virtually online?

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The updates include Search Options and enhanced search results featuring microformats for content such as reviews. Google provided a brief video introducing new functionality:

Search Options

Search Options allows the user to quickly refine search results by providing additional context to the search being made.  After making a query, a user has several options to further clarify or modify their search results, including:

• Refining results to videos, forums or reviews
• Specifying the time frame from which to display results
• The ability to augment search results with images from the sites returned
• Lengthening the amount of copy shown for each result
• Showing related search phrases
• Displaying related topics to the subject searched upon (“Wonder Wheel”)
• Viewing results on a timeline

The options above are available when viewing “all results.”  As criteria are applied, the user’s scenario changes.  For example, if the searcher specifies video results only, the options change, removing criteria which is not relevant, but adding other opportunities, like the ability to specify the duration of the videos displayed.

Search Result, Snippets and Microformats

In search results, Google is now also returning different information depending upon the the context of the information searched upon.  In Google’s words:

We call the set of information we return with each result a “snippet,” and today we are announcing that some of our snippets are going to get richer. These “rich snippets” extract and show more useful information from web pages than the preview text that you are used to seeing.

The example which Google provides shows a restaurant search in which the results display star ratings of a result right in the search result listing (as opposed to needing to go to a review site).  Snippets fundamentally change the function of search results.  How and what information to display regarding a particular topic or result is unclear, but what is clear is that this will be a feature which continually evolves.  Google’s blog posting continues to explain the role of Google and the community in defining the feature:

We can’t provide these snippets on our own, so we hope that web publishers will help us by adopting microformats or RDFa standards to mark up their HTML and bring this structured data to the surface. This will help people better understand the information you have on your page so they can spend more time there and less on Google. We will be rolling this feature out gradually to ensure that the quality of Google’s search results stays high.

These new enhancements to Google Search are highly significant; the most significant changes since Universal Search was introduced.

The impact to the Google searcher are clear: Search just got better.  What impact will this have on the SEO community?

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You can read the entire experiment parameters and results in the original post, but I wanted to check-in and confirm that the rankings have maintained over time.  Here are two Google screenshots taken this morning for one and two-word Google searches:

• +3 days – Google Page 1, result 5 (Search phrase: “iPhone dynolicous”) – a decline of 1 position
• +3 days – Google Page 1, results 2 and 3 (Search phrase: “dynolicous”) – an improvement of 7 positions

Evidence, but this test isn’t that compelling

While the test did validate that the method has some merit, the terms which I selected are deep into niche territory and don’t receive substantial traffic.  To further demonstrate the ability to achieve Google rankings in this manner I’ve run another test with an increased difficulty level. I’ll be publishing those results soon.  Stay tuned.

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Here’s an overview of one of my latest experiments:

Hypothesis: Google is giving preferential treatment to blog posts with video syndicated from a Google video sharing site (Google Video or YouTube).

Experiment: Post reasonably well crafted blog posts with relevant embedded video and monitor keywords and keyphrases to see if ranking could be achieved.

Prediction: Page 1 Google SERP listings in less than a day for targeted keyphrases.

Blog/Video/Post Details:

1. Blog to post on: http://www.on-a-mac.com
2. Post topic: an iPhone App (called Dynolicous) for which I had recently seen a video on YouTube
3. Keywords: Present in the post title (and title tag), page name, post content and post tags

Results: This is the third test I’ve personally run and I’ve had the same remarkable result.  When searching Google for targeted keywords and keyphrases:

• Page 2 or better Google rankings in less than  15 minutes
• Page 1 Google rankings in less than 4 hours
• A few page 1, result 1 Google rankings for more detailed searches which had direct competition (three word searches)
• Without any type of maintenance/attention, some rankings have slipped downward over time but still held page 1 and page 2 positions on Google.  Other rankings have held stable, even on page 1 of Google results (those page 1 rankings were for two or three word search phrases).

Timeline to Page 1 on Google (Test date: 19 August 2008):

• 9:41 am – Blog post with video published (How accurate is the iPhone Dynolicious? [video])
• 9:56 am – Google Page 2, result 1 (Search phrase: “iPhone dynolicous video”)
• 1:12 pm – Google Page 1, result 10 (Search phrase: “iPhone dynolicous video”)
• 1:24 pm – Google Page 1, result 4 (Search phrase: “iPhone dynolicous video”)
• 1:27 pm – Google Page 1, result 1 and 2 (Search phrase: “iPhone dynolicous video”)
• 1:28 pm – Google Page 1, result 4 (Search phrase: “iPhone dynolicous”)
• 1:28 pm – Google Page 1, result 10 (Search phrase: “dynolicous”)

Some of these screenshots (below) are from my iPhone as I left the office right after I posted the video.  I was unfortunately in that meeting for a few hours, so I’m not sure exactly when the results moved onto page 1.  When searching Google from the iPhone I was using the Safari web browser and the same Google site (not the Google Mobile Search site or the Google Search App for the iPhone).

The iPhone screenshots have the time from the phone on them.  For the other screenshots I’m relying on my Mac’s finder to get the “Date Modified” time.  The only thing I’ve done to these pictures is blurred my email account as I was logged into Google when a few of the screenshots were taken (being logged in to Google had no effect either way in case you were curious).

This technique has no effect whatsoever on MSN/Live or Yahoo.  I would anticipate that this effect will not last over time on Google either.  Until then, enjoy!

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…uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.

The blog posting on YouTube’s site indicated that new features will be added to the reporting capabilities quickly. That’s good news—the initial roll out features are welcomed, but aren’t all that robust or useful—especially after the drought of information previously available. YouTube, here’s a few useful metrics to add to your list:

• Average duration of video view in minutes:seconds
• How many times the video was shared
• Views on syndication sites by syndication URL
• Viewer demographic information

YouTube: if you need more ideas on what your users really want, contact me, or better, look at your user feedback over the past few years.

Oh, and one more thing. I’ve got enough places to track data. Why can’t we just get this data inside Google Analytics?

Also see:

• The original post on YouTube’s blog
• YouTube Insight blog post on The Official Google Blog
• YouTube Insight: Underwhelming – Conde Nast Portfolio.com

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