Google Wave - Ahead of its Time or Just Another Failure?

Google Wave may be going away, but it is highly unlikely that the web has felt its presence for the last time. As Google said in its announcement, the company will extend the technology for use in other Google projects.

It will be interesting to see if the technology still goes by the name Wave, but I have little doubt that some of the innovations we've seen in Wave will be popping up in various Google offerings in the form of new products and new features to existing products.

Google's aim with Wave was to replace email. That didn't happen, and frankly, I have a hard time believing that too many people bought into that one, but that didn't change the fact that Wave did some interesting things. One only had to watch a demo or two from someone who knew what they were doing to see its potential.

How to Hard-Wire Your Site to Google

Until Bing turns into David and slays Goliath, the only search engine game in town is Google. While the other search engines can't be ignored or forgotten, when it comes to online search, Google will deliver the majority of your quality organic traffic. For webmasters and especially for online marketers, having your website virtually hard-wired to Google is a marketing Must-Do.

We are strictly talking about white hat stuff here. If you're seeking the opposite color, look elsewhere. As a full-time search engine marketer, I have learned a few things over the 10 years or so I have been working on the web. One of the most significant factors running constantly in the background has been Google. And, the underlying fact is that the more I intertwined my sites and content with Google, the more success I achieved. There seemed to be a direct correlation between the two, making it a little more than ironic that the original name for Google was BackRub.

Five years of Google blogging

It's time again for our annual wrap-up of blogging at Google. You may have noticed 2009 marked our fifth year here on the Official Google Blog — our first post was in April 2004 — and it was our busiest year yet. This is our 423rd post of 2009 — a 15 percent increase over last year. We're also pleased to note that a total of 14,493,472 readers stopped by this year, a 21 percent increase. You hail from all over: more than half of visitors are outside of the U.S. The other top countries are (in order) U.K., India, Canada, Germany and France.

What captured your attention this year? Here are the top 10 posts of 2009, by unique pageviews:

Social Media Optimization - A Priority For Your SEO Campaign

Social media optimization (SMO) is an imperative ingredient of your SEO campaigns. In the past, social networking sites were little more than an oddity. Today, several have acquired enormous ranking authority from top search engines. If you are not leveraging these sites to improve your exposure and communicate with your niche market, your search engine positions are vulnerable to your competitors.

In this article, we will describe the influence that social media optimization is currently having on search marketing. We'll also give you the rules of engagement for executing an effective SMO campaign. We'll explain what SEO social media is, and the advantage of hiring an experienced SEO consultant to spearhead your social media optimization efforts.

The Influence Of Social Media Optimization On Search Marketing

Search marketing has always relied upon exposure in the search engines to drive targeted traffíc. For years, gaining that exposure was based solely upon the development of your site and generating links pointing to your site. Both are still important today. However, social media optimization has shifted the landscape of search engine marketing.