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March 22nd, 2010 by Nick
This February (2010), Google launched its new Buzz service. It was rolled out to Gmail users in a storm of controversy over privacy concerns. A good many users were unhappy about Gmail contacts being automatically added to their Buzz contact list at start up. The issue has since been addressed, and it doesn’t seem to have made much of a dent in Buzz’s early uptake and usage rates. The number of messages and comments being sent is well over a hundred thousand per hour on average. Millions of posts have already been made.
Pundits had long been speculating that Google- the super corporation of the modern internet- would smell the coffee of rapidly brewing social media popularity and get more involved, and now they have. Previous attempts like Google Orkut and Friend Connect have fallen a little flat in the UK and the US (although Orkut is extremely popular in some countries). Although it did anger some Gmail users, wiring Buzz into the existing Gmail framework gave Buzz a huge leg up and may be the reason it’s taken off so well. At a stroke, millions of users were signed up. Already, more people are on Buzz than Twitter.
We all know social media optimisation is important and is getting more important as the internet evolves. On one level Google Buzz is just another sign of the move towards a more social web. That said, it’s another avenue for social media marketing and new kinds of SEO, so it’s more than worth exploring.
What does it do? Buzz is touted as a direct competitor to Twitter, and is primarily concerned with disseminating short messages in the style of Facebook status updates. It’s also entwined with Picasa, the online photo sharing website, and will automatically notify you of new uploads to your contacts’ Picasa albums.
Buzz is open platform. That means people can build applications that use it and talk to it. This is important for SEO, and means the scope to interact with Buzz is much greater than it might otherwise be. Getting involved in social media using your website is as important as using SMM as an off-page optimisation strategy. Most businesses will need professional help to do it, and plenty are getting in there already.
Google is using Buzz to provide adspace much like it does on search engine results pages. It’s tied into the same system and doesn’t seem to be all that different- just a new venue. Results from Buzz aren’t turning up in SERPs yet (at least not immediately) but they may do in the future – so watch this space for the impact that could be make on the world of search engine optimization.
We do know that Buzz content is being crawled and indexed, though, so what’s said there is directly relevant to rankings. It should become a new element in our link building strategies. There are also Buzz-oriented keyword research tools in development, aiming to use Buzz to find out what users are talking about and what terms crop up frequently.
Get out there and get stuck in. like all social media marketing, the key with Buzz is to get involved.
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In my opinion, it’ll take a little while for Google Buzz to rule the social media networking game! It’s still a toss between Facebook and Twitter though.
Way to go from Google Buzz!